Recently, Lisa Gough and I had the honour of spending the afternoon at Stormont for the official launch of the Language Launchpad Project, a major initiative focused on speech and language development in young children across Northern Ireland.
This is more than just a policy project. It’s a vital step forward in addressing early childhood communication needs, and we’re proud to have played an important role in shaping its direction.
Why does this matter? Because a child’s language skills at age two are a strong predictor of how well they’ll read when they start school—and even their long-term educational success. That’s a big deal.
The launch was well supported at the highest level. Both Paul Givan (Minister for Education) and Mike Nesbitt (Minister for Health) attended, sending a clear message of the importance of this initiative at the local government level.
It was also personal for us as FN Research carried out the research that underpins the Language Launchpad’s strategy and future actions. This included four comprehensive online surveys targeting parents, early years practitioners, health professionals, and speech and language therapists, with an overall sample in excess of N=1000 respondents. We then facilitated follow-up focus groups with parents and health visitors to dig deeper into some of the key issues.
All of these insights are now published in the official Language Launchpad Report by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists NI.
We’re incredibly grateful to Ruth Sedgewick and Sue McBride for trusting us with this work. It was a pleasure to be part of something so impactful.
If your organisation needs to better understand its audience, we’d love to help. Email fiona@fnresearch.co.uk.