Research project
Co-creating guidelines for the use Q-BEx for language screening
- Start date: 1 September 2024
- End date: 31 August 2025
- Funder: ESRC Impact Acceleration (via LSSI)
- Primary investigator: Prof Cécile De Cat
- External co-investigators: Louise McChrystal
- Postdoctoral researcher: Elliot Holmes
Value
£14,975
Partners and collaborators
Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust New Mill, Victoria Road, Saltaire, Bradford, BD18 3LD
Description
ELSEC (“Early Language Screening for Every Child”) is a joint initiative of the NHS and the Department for Education in England, to improve the early identification of language support needs and reduce the rate of unnecessary specialist referrals, thereby increasing workforce capacity. The Bradford pathfinder site will be trialling the use Q-BEx as a triage tool to flag children at risk of language impairment. Q-BEx (“Quantifying Bilingual Experience”) is an online questionnaire, available in 28 languages, which produces individual reports of children’s experience and proficiency in up to three languages. Using the information provided by parents, it calculates a Language Concern score to flag children at risk of language impairment.
Our first aim is to jointly evaluate the informativity of Q-BEx as triage tool, thereby helping ESLEC improve standards of evidence for language screening and reduce unnecessary referrals. This will require comparing the Language Concern score with the assessment of children’s language abilities independently carried out by the Bradford team.
Our second aim is to co-create guidelines for the use of Q-BEx as a triage tool across education settings, also explaining how this free tool can help professionals better understand the strengths and challenges of the children in their care.
Impact
By improving the early identification of language support needs, this project will make it possible to reduce the rate of unnecessary specialist referrals (which are frequent in multilingual children) without missing children at risk (also frequent in multilingual children), thereby increasing workforce capacity without compromising on efficiency. This will have societal and economic benefits.
The direct real-life impacts will mainly be for bilingual children: Q-BEx will allow their two languages to be taken into account when assessing their needs. As a result, this will improve the early identification of needs (and provision of support) for these children. It will reduce the rate of under-referrals, which are very high in bilinguals (due to lack of resources and skills) and is currently a source of inequality.