An evaluation of a prescribed joint book reading intervention for preschool children with speech, language and communication needs

Purpose: The aims of the present study were twofold: first, to investigate reading and screen time habits in a large clinical sample of caregivers of children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) before and after an 8 week intervention focussed on daily joint book reading and, second, to capture the caregivers' experiences of the activity. Method: Preschool aged children with SLCN and their caregivers were consecutively recruited during their first visit to the department of Speech and Language Pathology, Gavle County Hospital, Sweden. They participated in a survey-based interview before and after receiving an intervention with recommendations of at least 10 minutes of daily book reading with an interactional focus, as an add-on to ordinary speech-language pathology services. The results were analysed using descriptive statistics of the answers to the questions in the interview, as well as a thematic analysis of free-text comments. Result: The 135 families who participated in the pre-intervention interview survey reported variable reading frequency and screen time. The post-intervention interview survey was completed by 107 families. The results demonstrated significant increases in reading frequency and reading time, and a significant decrease in screen time per day. Caregivers also reported positive experiences of the daily interactive book reading. Conclusion: The results of this study demonstrate that a speech-language pathologist-(SLP) managed, caregiver-led book reading intervention is feasible and might have a positive impact on reading, other factors related to reading, and screen time in families of children with SLCN.