Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit

Child Talk What Works was a three year programme funded by NIHR. The programme focused on exploring the effectiveness of interventions for pre- school children who have primary speech and Language. It aimed to develop an evidence based approach to intervention that integrates research evidence with practitioner consensus and perspectives of families in a model that improves the targeting and stratification of interventions to meet the need of the individual child and their family.

The parent panel was put in place for phase two of the programme. They have had an impact on the following aspects of Child Talk

• Ensuring that all research papers and documents were understandable to a lay audience
• Improving recruitment design for example encouraging researchers to go to the communities at a time that would work for the participating families
• They have attended workshops to promote Child Talk and will be helping with disseminating the results.
• They have also helped Phd students to improve their study design
• They have also attend the programme advisory board

The panel of four parents meet for two hours, about every two months, with the chief investigator and other member of the team. The decision process were transparent panel could see how their suggestions were being followed up/implemented within the project.