BEST has been evaluated in a pilot study. The stages of development were disseminated and discussed at the North East Speech and Language Therapy Research Symposium (08/07/2016):

Planning and Implementing Research in Practice: Evaluating the effectiveness of BEST intervention for children with expressive language impairment.

Read about the BEST pilot study.

 

BEST is a theoretically motivated early language intervention (Building Early Sentences Therapy - BEST), which has been developed through partnership between academics and practitioners. BEST is for children aged between 3;0 years and 6;0 years who have yet to consistently produce three phrase spoken sentences such as “the man is eating an apple”.

BEST has been successfully used in a busy Children’s Speech and Language Therapy Service in community and school settings. BEST may be delivered in small groups or individually. The homework packs and progress chart are designed to be attractive and easily accessed by all families, even those with limited literacy skills.

The BEST approach is delivered in English. B-BEST (Bilingual BEST) in other minority ethnic languages is planned for the future, following further funding applications.

BEST includes structured descriptive assessments. These assessments allow the child’s progress to be compared with their own baseline prior to commencing the programme. This means that BEST may be used as a diagnostic therapy package and makes outcome measurement simple.

BEST is based on current linguistic theory and is child-led. The child does not have to provide responses immediately and can listen to learn language, joining in when they feel confident to do so. The use of toys and real objects make it accessible and fun for children and their families.

 

Two steps to BEST success: Order the toolkit and put together your BEST toy box and you're ready to deliver the programme!