WellComm

We have been offering the opportunity to access, at heavily subsidised rates, a WellComm Early Years Toolkit for use in schools and settings serving Early Years aged children across the City of York local authority area. This offer has been taken by nearly 95% of all group based early years schools and settings in the City of York Council area.

This is based on the evidence of impact developed through the Early Talk for York approach and is the first step towards city-wide scale up of these evidence informed ways of working. In return for a Toolkit to keep, we have asked for a small number of things in return, including screening all Early Years children annually.

For more information on WellComm, visit GL Assessment's website  (please note: this link will take you to information on both the primary and Early Years toolkits).

The strongly evidence-based principles that the WellComm Toolkit is based on:

that a focus on communication and language outcomes is the topmost priority for settings’ and schools’ who work with Early Years aged children
there is a national issue with under identification of children with speech, language and communication needs and this is also happening in York
WellComm has been one key element of the Early Talk for York approach which has shown an increase in identification and is now showing impact on cohort level children’s outcomes. Find out more about the Early Talk for York approach

The Benefits of WellComm

During 2023, the University of York completed an independent evaluation of the use of WellComm across the city. The findings of this evaluation were overwhelmingly positive with lots of reports of improved practitioner knowledge, understanding and confidence, as well as supporting practitioners to more quickly and accurately identify children’s needs.

For children, individual settings and schools:

there has been increased early identification of need
an intervention toolkit to respond to needs on an individual or group basis
the WellComm Toolkit supports practitioners’ early intervention and timely response
a benefit is that the WellComm Toolkit supports practitioners early intervention and timely response
the Toolkit will support the quality and consistency of referrals to specialist services
the Toolkit can become embedded as part of practice, with training available for all members of the team.

For the system, for all children there is a greater understanding of need across the city so future support work can be better targeted and commissioning more responsive

Hear from colleagues in York already using WellComm

In this video Berni, the manager of Muddy Boots Nursery in York, talks about the way they have used the WellComm Toolkit effectively in their setting. She shares her top 3 tips for embedding universal screening into routine practice.

In this video Emma, a teaching assistant at Westfield Primary Community School in York, talks about the way they have universally screened all children, how they use the results to inform their practice and some of the wider benefits of using the WellComm Toolkit.

Drawbacks

There are 2 drawbacks to using WellComm:

Workload - universally screening all children on an annual basis will take some time to bed into practice. It’s possible to achieve but requires effort to work out compatible ways of doing it. While there will be challenges in initial workloads, the recommendation to screen universally comes from schools and settings who have used WellComm as part of the Early Talk for York delivery group
False positives - we know WellComm will return a small number of ‘false positives’ (for example, children who don’t really have additional needs). This number is likely to be far smaller than the additional identification that this approach will take so the net result is a positive one. It also relies on proportionate response, the Toolkit is designed to be used to support professional judgement, not replace it.

This opportunity

The Early Years Improvement Board and York Schools and Academies Board (YSAB) have both approved support for this roll out, based on the increasing evidence of promise from the Early Talk for York programme and aligning with the priorities that settings and schools have told us about in response to COVID-19.

The funding for subsidising the purchase comes from the Disability Access Fund underspend as well as funding from YSAB as a key strand of the Education Futures work that is going on across all ages of children across the city.