“We’re all in it together”: uniting a diverse range of professionals and people with lived experience within the development of a complex, theory-based paediatric speech and language therapy intervention

TL;DR

This paper explores how involving diverse professionals and people with lived experience helped create a new speech and language therapy intervention for children.

Contribution

The study highlights the personal and professional benefits of uniting diverse stakeholders in developing a theory-based pediatric intervention.

Findings

A diverse steering group enriched professional practice and increased confidence in research participation.

Creating a safe and supportive space is key to sustained involvement and relevant research outcomes.

Structured reflection tools like PiiAF helped assess the impact of diverse group involvement.

Abstract

It is increasingly commonplace to involve relevant professionals and people with lived experience within healthcare research. Although valuable case studies regarding such involvement exist, there is currently a paucity of case studies highlighting the professional and personal impacts of uniting a diverse group of professionals and people with lived experience within the development of new, theory-based interventions. The aim of this paper is to provide insight into the impacts of involving a diverse range of individuals, unified within a single steering group, within the development of a new, theory-based, paediatric speech and language therapy intervention (“Supporting Words and Sounds” - SWanS). By describing the involvement process in detail and providing our personal insights, we hope our recommendations will be of use to future healthcare researchers.

Our project steering group consists of two people with lived experience (an adult with Developmental Language Disorder-DLD, a parent of a child with DLD), three specialist NHS speech and language therapists (including one university lecturer with equality and diversity expertise), and two individuals working in the education sector (a specialist teacher and a bilingual educational support worker). Group members have been involved across the 4 phase intervention development process. Tools such as the PiiAF (Public involvement impact Assessment Framework) have guided our personal and professional reflections on our individual experiences of being in a diverse steering group responsible for developing a new and complex theory-based intervention.

We found that having a diverse range of people unified in a singular intervention development steering group had unexpected benefits. Learning from each other has enriched professional practice and developed individuals’ confidence in terms of playing an active role in research. Our structured reflection has implications for future intervention development research, by highlighting that the provision of a safe, supportive space and nurturing of shared values is key when involving a diverse range of parties. Such contexts promote sustained involvement and therefore have longer term implications for increasing the relevance of the research for those it is aiming to help.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40900-025-00738-8.

Some children find it difficult to learn to talk for no obvious reason. They may have difficulties learning words (language) or saying sounds (speech). Some children have both speech and language difficulties. We need to develop a speech and language therapy intervention to help them. This is complex. This is because the intervention needs to be based on theory. This includes linguistic theories about how sounds and words develop in young children.

Our steering group has helped develop a new theory-based intervention called SWanS (“Supporting Words and Sounds”). Together, we have helped make the intervention the best it can be. Our group consists of people with lived experience (an adult with language difficulties, a parent of a child with speech/language difficulties). Our group also consists of two educational professionals and three speech and language therapists. In this paper, we are reflecting on our personal and professional experiences of being involved in the group. We want to share the potential benefits of bringing together people with different backgrounds when developing a theory-based intervention. We used tools such as the PiiAF (Public involvement impactAssessment Framework) to help us reflect.

We found it important to have people from different backgrounds in our steering group. We all feel more confident in taking part in research after being in the group together. We have also learnt a lot from each other’s experiences. We have taken these learnings into our personal and professional lives. This was possible due to the group being a safe and supportive space.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40900-025-00738-8.