Speech therapy: When sorry seems to be the hardest word

young offenders with communication problems and risk of more crime is being a voice

Ryan Griffiths is in trouble. He must "fix" because the police have said - that the damage of a car - but he does not know what that means

"I'm in my last chance," says Griffiths (not her real name), 17, of Bolton, speech therapist, Ian Warriner. "The next time something happens, it will not be good."

using a simple control scheme, the two discuss the crime and car theft Griffiths will lead to the police and the actions that will help you stay in the background, where it is happy with his foster family and his dog.

Warriner then helps the young offender back to call the different ways that could remedy the situation with the owner of the vehicle - and pay damages, he visited, or write a letter. Suddenly, the realization. Griffiths shouted: "It is a kind way of saying sorry"

Warriner Bolton paid for NHS Foundation Trust to work with the team of local youth offending (YOT) to identify and fill gaps in speech and language of young offenders to prevent them from falling into the more crime. In this case, that convinced a panel to keep Griffiths outside the criminal justice system, due to serious discourse, social and educational needs, as long as the young man does the work for restitution as any other offender .

In the labor force Warriner Bolton YOT ??has been awarded £ 75,000 by the Ministry of Health to concentrate for a year in the assessment of communication problems first-time offenders and to identify effective language interventions. Young offenders often have physical health problems and mental health, are poorer school performance and achieve lower than the general population. The grant is one of 31 awarded to YOT to examine aspects of the health of their charges. "Bolton is granted only by communication difficulties.

Passion

Warriner to work with young offenders is triggered by the knowledge that about 60% have a communication disorder, and yet the tools to improve the prospects of offenders, and court proceedings it own, are based on the ability of the language is. "My mission is to facilitate their passage through the system," he said. "Children like Ryan are not criminals - received a bad start in life, people forget that children are involved, all that they see are young offenders. ".

It describes a young man who thought that "intervention" was "something to do with an owl in a tree." These are young people who may have difficulty maintaining eye contact and following a conversation, limited vocabulary and short attention span. Some verbal skills than six years. Others use the F word between each word, because their grans do, he said.

• Warriner, a former stutterer, began his working life as a structural engineer. He trained to become a speech therapist in 1997 and in 2008 began working with Bolton YOT.
• At that time, only two others (in Leeds and Bradford YOT) on a total of 147, had speech therapists, and Conservative MP John Bercow was commissioned by the Labour government to carry out a review children and families affected by the needs of speech, language and communication. The report then describes the speech and language provides the UK as "unacceptable".

Warriner, meanwhile, are teenagers who had the communication skills of children in primary schools. Without the means to measure their capabilities, developed an assessment tool approximate. Of 42 questions, down from nine that he and other professionals in Bolton used to examine first-time offenders and those already in the system that the staff may have concerns about. The questions relate to: "Youth has little or no eye contact", "Do you see on the floor or walls of the greatest number?" And "Do young people find it difficult to you listen? "

Tool

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