Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN) in Youth Justice: Understanding and Addressing the Impact Event Report

“Speech, language and communication needs’, or ‘SLCN’ refer to those who have difficulties or conditions affecting aspects of their communication… Speech refers to spoken sounds…Language refers to comprehension and expression… Communication broadly refers to the unification of a range of skills to allow interaction with others. Individuals with SLCN have difficulty in one or more of the above domains. For some, these difficulties may be mild and limited to particular situations. For many, these difficulties are persistent, pervasive and complex” (CYCJ, 2017, pp.7-9). On October 31, 2017, CYCJ and the Improving Life Chances Implementation Group facilitated the SLCN in Youth Justice workshop. The event was attended by over 40 youth and criminal justice practitioners and managers, speech and language therapists, civil servants, education professionals, and academics from across 12 local authorities, 4 health boards, and 7 other organisations including Police Scotland, Community Justice Scotland, the Scottish Sentencing Council and third sector organisations. This mix of delegates was commented on in event evaluations (completed by 69% of participants) as a real strength of the event.