A new grant to help children with speech delays has been awarded to families in Southampton.

The £314,711 grant will go towards children aged between two and three who have been clinically diagnosed with early language delay.

Children involved in the study will wear a vest fitted with a small device, which records the child’s natural communication over the course of a day, providing linguistic data for the team to analyse.

Researchers from Solent NHS Trust will also run a new treatment programme for the toddler which they hope will help parents interact with their children in the right way to encourage language development.

The grant has been given by the Nuffield Foundation and will go to 160 families from Southampton and Portsmouth.

Solent NHS Trust’s Dr Deborah Gibbard is leading the study and said by the age of two children would usually have around 50 words in their vocabulary and be forming utterances of between two and four words.

But with evidence showing that social disadvantage is associated with children’s communication the programme will target “disadvantaged families” who will also be given access to other support including free crèche facilities.

Dr Gibbard added: “Our intervention, delivered by a speech and language therapist, is designed to teach parents how to develop their child’s language at home. This has been shown to be broadly effective and we are grateful to the Foundation for supporting our local study to help disadvantaged families in our cities.

“Early treatment for language problems is important to help prevent low educational achievement and poorer outcomes later in life and early intervention and parental involvement in treatment has proven beneficial for pre-school children experiencing language development difficulties.

“Success of the parent groups will be valuable for socially disadvantaged communities given the long lasting effects of children’s language delay on education, personality, employment and wider society. “More importantly, the families will benefit from a reduction in health and social inequalities that impact on the individual, family and wider communities, ensuring children have the best possible start in life.”

Families will be recruited through a speech and language therapist, following an initial assessment with the service. The trial run from April 2017 to March 2020.