Talking Buddies in Laois and Offaly

Talking Buddies is a new initiative funded by Sláintecare to promote language development in communities in Laois and Offaly and encourage everyone to get reading aloud to young children aged 0 -5.

Talking Buddies want to encourage parents and anyone in a child’s life to read books together every day. The evidence shows that sharing a book everyday greatly improves a child’s vocabulary. Not only will your child learn new words through books, but also it is a great opportunity for bonding. The Talking Buddies programme offers parents timely access to education and training resources about using books to develop language.

Many of the referrals for Speech & Language Therapy for children aged 0-5 are for children with delayed language development. Currently the Speech & Language Therapists run training programmes for parents of these children, but they felt that if parents had accessible public health education earlier it would greatly reduce the number of referrals into the Speech & Language Therapy service and thereby reduce Speech and Language Therapy waiting lists.

With the Talking Buddies programme, they have created a series of short education and training videos about how best to share books with your child. The first series of videos will include information on; the benefits of books, reading to babies, learning new words and book recommendations.

One of the aims of the Sláintecare Integration Fund is for people to become more engaged and empowered in their own healthcare, and this service allows people to do that, with timely accessible public health education. Timely access for parents to these supports will help improve speech and language outcomes for children experiencing difficulties as well as reducing waiting times for the Speech and Language service.

Talking Buddies ran a very successful book drive campaign in Laois and Offaly and collected over 550 books. They plan to gift these books to children in communities and also want to support families and other people in a child’s life to use books in ways that gets the most out of them. Talking Buddies have made links with various community groups in need in Laois and Offaly. An element of the gifting process is offering support and training to these communities about the great benefits that books offer for language development.

As a result of COVID-19, Talking Buddies have not been able to meet with communities yet, but they hope to meet with preschools, community groups and parents in Laois and Offaly to implement the Talking Buddies Programme as soon as it is safe to do so. Talking Buddies Programme is an extension of the video material, it offers more indepth education and training about using books to develop language’

You can find more details on the Talking Buddies website https://www.talkingbuddies.ie