Blossom House School has been involved in a speech research project, with children from school and their families directly involved in the research via ongoing assessment, observations and feedback and SLT involvement in the steering group to support development of the project.

The first paper of this project has now been published. The published paper is called "Sub-groups of spoken language and broader communication skills in a large heterogenous cohort of minimally verbal school-age children: evidence of discrepant profiles."

This research is being carried out as part of project ISLaND (Investigating Spoken Language in Neuro-Developmental conditions) which aims to investigate why some neurodivergent children have difficulty acquiring spoken language, and how this might impact their social, cognitive, and emotional development. It also seeks to elucidate mechanisms of language growth in minimally verbal children, including investigating the prevalence and significance of speech-motor planning difficulties in neurodevelopmental conditions like autism, and how they relate to expressive language development.

If you would like to read the published paper or learn more information about the research project you can find the link on their website, where you'll find a link to the full paper, alongside a short, written summary and video explanation of our findings.

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