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

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. Preschool aged children with SLCN and their caregivers were consecutively recruited during their first visit to the department of Speech and Language Pathology, Gävle 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. 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. 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.