Free courses, programmes, and resources for parents

Little Talkers is aimed at parents who would like to develop their child's talking and language skills.

Please note that if you are concerned there is a delay in your child's speech, you can get advice directly from the Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) service.

SALT offers 30-minute online or telephone sessions with one of our therapists. These are for parents and carers only, please do not include your child in this session. To request a session contact us at:

Email: [email protected]
Phone: 01296 838000 (Option 4)

In the subject of your email please use 'SALT parent/carer early years advice session'.

If it is a more general concern and you wish to support your child’s language development, Little Talkers may be able to help.

Little Talkers is a 5 to 6-week programme. It offers support if you're concerned about your toddler's talking and understanding of language but their social skills appear to be developing well.

The fun and relaxed sessions are designed by the Buckinghamshire Speech and Language Therapy service and they run at Family Centres.

• runs for 5 to 6 weeks by Early Years Support Workers
• held during the day in local family centres
• parents attend with children between 18 months to 3 years

Little Talkers topics covered

Little Talkers will teach you useful ways to encourage your child’s talking and listening skills including:

• making small changes to the way you play and talk with your child to help their speech, language and communication skills
• a range of visual tools, including Makaton signing to encourage your child’s talking
• understanding and use of everyday vocabulary words
• listening and attention so that they're ready for language learning
• early social skills and communication confidence

The Nurturing Programme is our ‘cognitive-relational programme’ giving you new listening and communicating skills to use with your 3 to 11-year-old.

It also helps you understand behaviours and improve the emotional health of adults and children in the family and strengthen relationships.

• runs for 3 or 5 weeks
• parents attend without children

The Nurturing Programme covers:

• Ages and stages in children’s development
• Communicating clearly: using I statements
• Family rules, rewards, penalties and discipline
• Feelings…and what we do with them
• Behaviour to ignore
• Helping children grow up and keeping them safe
• Calming Down

Our programmes are suitable for parents of children with additional needs both diagnosed and awaiting diagnosis.

Talking Teens is our programme exploring the relationships with your teens, including communication, negotiating, decision-making and strategies to reduce conflict. It helps you understand your teenager’s feelings and behaviour and gives you strategies to improve your relationship.

The programme looks at your family's and young person’s circumstances to give you practical support. The programme is also suitable if your teenager has SEND.

• 2 day or a 5-week virtual course
• parents attend without children
• daytime and evening courses for working parents
• suitable if your teenager has SEND

Talking Teens covers:

• Exploring the importance of parents for teenagers
• Developing parents’ understanding of teenage development and the influence of brain development on behaviour
• Developing parents’ understanding of the importance of listening, verbal and non-verbal communication
• Promoting positive approaches to boundary-setting and problem-solving
• Providing an opportunity for parents to share their experience with others

Keeping your child in mind is our programme for parents who are ready to reflect on their own relationships, communication styles and parenting to make positive changes for themselves and their children.

We aim to support parents to understand the importance of positive family relationships and enhance the emotional health of children and parents. It will also support parents where a difference in parenting styles has caused a communication breakdown.

• 4-week course for 2 hours per week or a 1 or 2 day session
• parents attend without children
• suitable if your child has SEND

Keeping your child in mind covers:

• Self-awareness
• Appropriate expectations
• Boundaries and positive discipline
• Understanding empathy

Throughout the year we run extra virtual versions of our Talking Teens programme for people who couldn’t attend in person. This could be because of:

• childcare arrangements
• transport issues
• health or anxiety reasons
• separated parents want to join a programme separately

We know parents often get much more from attending parenting programmes in person, but to make sure no one misses out, we offer virtual sessions too. These do not replace face-to-face groups, but do ensure that parents who can't attend for a variety of reasons, can benefit from these valuable programmes.

We also run drop-in sessions for parents and their children. These sessions are a great way to meet others and have a chat with our friendly team.

If you’re interested in a parenting programme but anxious about registering, come along to a drop-in and we’ll talk you through them.