A quasi-experimental evaluation of a home-visiting programme (Talking Together) for early language difficulties in a multilingual, socioeconomically deprived population

Children start learning language as babies. They pick up words and skills by listening to their parents, carers, and family members at home, and need their parents and carers to spend quality time with them, and to recognise and seek help if there is a problem. However, there are many
reasons why parents and carers might not be able to do this. For example, in low income families, this can be due to financial stresses or a lack of access to resources like books. Because of this, some children start school already behind in their language skills, and it can be very hard for them to catch up later on, which can affect their ability to communicate, to read and to write, which in turn can affect their chances at employment and wellbeing later in life. To help fix this, a programme called Talking Together was set up in Bradford. The goal was to make sure as many children as possible in the area were checked for language problems and had support if needed. Here is how it worked:
• Home Visits: Instead of making families travel to a health centre, trained staff went directly to people’s houses.
• Different Languages: staff spoke many different languages, so they could help families who didn’t speak English as their first language.
• Checking Progress (screening): They checked if children were having trouble understanding others when they spoke, or trouble talking.
• Helping Parents (intervention): If a child needed extra support, staff worked with parents, like reading books together or finding new ways to encourage their child to talk.
The programme ran from 2016 to 2024, and now we want to see if it actually made a difference. By looking at school data, this research project will check if the children who took part in Talking Together are now doing better at school at reading and writing, and also if they are able to get along with others and manage their feelings.