Speech and Language Therapy

David Williams Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

Thank you for your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, which my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) introduced on behalf of the Petitions Committee. I thank Mikey for campaigning to bring this really important matter to this place.

I cannot miss the opportunity to say that I am delighted to see Chris Kamara in the Public Gallery. I am a Stoke MP, and my twin sister is a massive Stoke City fan, so she will be most envious that she is not in Westminster Hall today.

I want to emphasise the importance of speech and language therapy in delivering on our Government’s ambition for childhood development and in supporting children with special educational needs. Ten per cent of all children and young people have a diagnosed long-term speech, language and communication need. We must invest in such services so that those young people are not held back in school and can communicate confidently with their peers.

Early language development promotes positive outcomes later in life, but in disadvantaged areas such as my constituency, about half of children start school with delayed language skills or diagnosed speech, language and communication needs. Speech and language therapists provide vital support in clinical settings to children with diagnosed complex needs and SEND. They also deliver universal programmes in early years settings, but sadly those programmes have been decimated by funding cuts in recent years.

Across Stoke-on-Trent and Kidsgrove, our local team at the Midlands Partnership University NHS foundation trust and organisations such as Stoke Speaks Out and Thrive at Five work incredibly hard to support our children, but sadly I have heard repeated concerns from local service providers about insufficient funding, rising demand and difficulties with recruitment and retention. Investment has simply not kept pace with the increase in the number of children with increasingly complex needs and SEND. I was surprised to learn that in Stoke-on-Trent an average of 269 children are allocated to a single therapist’s caseload at any point in time. That is simply not acceptable.

Our children and young people deserve to be able to access clinical services when they need them, but too often that is not the case. In 2024, 41% waited longer than 18 weeks for therapy—the longest waiting list across paediatric services. Under-investment has impacted accessibility and waiting times for clinical services and has hollowed out our local preventive services. Scarce resources are being used to meet statutory requirements and deliver specialist services, and we have seen significant cuts to universal programmes that support children in early years settings to meet their developmental milestones.

We know that universal programmes have a very positive impact on children’s outcomes. Early intervention can prevent children from developing more complex needs and can reduce the need for referrals to more specialist services in the future. That is why we need more programmes such as Every Child a Talker, Thrive at Five and Stoke Speaks Out, which have delivered excellent support to our families across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire.

I am delighted that our Government have committed to a new target. We want 75% of our children to achieve a good level of development at five. The first three years of a child’s development are critical to their brain development. I stress the importance of investment in speech and language therapy to deliver on that mission, and our plans to reform the SEND system. I urge the Minister to listen to the calls for investment to tackle the long waiting lists faced by people in my constituency, and the calls to invest in preventive services.