With an early ‘Christmassy feel’ the team recently enjoyed our Autumn Continuing Professional Development (CPD) day.

As usual, the programme was packed both with clinical presentations including the latest developments in dysfluency management and treating children with nasal speech, domestic up-dates, including information security and, of course an in-depth presentation from external speakers in tandem with their Soundswell therapist.

This year we were delighted to invite Julie (deputy head) and Tina (EYFS lead) from Acocks Green primary school to talk to us about their EY provision (recently rated by Ofsted as ‘outstanding’).  Soundswell has been delivering a service to Acocks Green for around 9 years and Bryony (their current Soundswell therapist) has been working with them since 2017.

We were able to hear how a well constructed timetable makes use of every available opportunity for language enrichment.  However, children in the EYFS at Acocks Green enjoy the very best of approaches to both stimulating and developing language but also identifying (and implementing programmes of support) as early as possible with those children who are struggling

Staff make the very best use of the data they glean from the Wellcomm (EY) Toolkit.  The gains made by the end of Reception are significant and impressive.  A point well worth mentioning is that, at Acocks, TAs are given PPA time so that they can properly prepare for the sessions they deliver – the senior leadership are confident that this investment definitely contributes towards making every session count.

We have recently begun to use the Quinborne Community Centre as a venue for some of our training and events: it has a choice of rooms of different sizes and is an easy central place for far-flung team members to get to.

We enjoyed a splendid lunch – it was our first experience of using Flavoured Fork Catering  and we would certainly use them again.