South Ayrshire Communication Friendly Environments in the Community (SACFE)

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Who are we?

The South Ayrshire Communication Friendly Environments (SACFE) project is led by the SACFE Communities Team which consists of a Speech and Language Therapist and Speech and Language Therapy Assistant. The team work collaboratively with community settings within South Ayrshire Health and Social Care Partnership to successfully support the communication skills of the entire South Ayrshire population and ensure that services are accessible for all through establishing effective Communication Friendly Environments, therefore enhancing life-long outcomes for all service users.

What do we do?

A Communication Friendly Environment is a space that is designed to promote and support communication for EVERYONE who uses it. Communication Friendly Environments is a term used to describe key features of the environment, and the way people interact within that space, so that everybody can feel included.

A Communication Friendly setting should make communication easy, effective, and enjoyable. This will provide support for all, but especially those with speech, language and communication difficulties through developing these skills and removing barriers to communication. This in turn, will support learning, achievement, independence and social and emotional development.

The SACFE Communities Team works with any community setting within South Ayrshire to achieve their full Communication Friendly Environment accreditation e.g. Primary Care, businesses, leisure, voluntary groups and charities.

This involves:

areas signposted and labelled using words and symbols e.g. toilets, entrances/exits, storage, specific resources etc.
use of symbols and pictures to aid understanding through a 'Total Communication' approach e.g. visual menus, communication boards, British Sign Language, Makaton etc.
completion of staff Total Communication training (2 hour session) covering speech, language and communication strategies, Makaton awareness and communication boards.
acceptance of non-verbal communication as well as verbal communication with staff having an awareness of effective use of non-verbal communication e.g. gestures/symbols.
staff using a range of language strategies to effectively support speech, language and communication skills through everyday interactions e.g. pausing for processing time, information given in manageable chunks and getting down to the individual’s physical level (especially children’s) when interacting with them.

Once fully accredited, the setting is awarded their Communication Friendly plaque for display and are added to the South Ayrshire Communication Friendly map to enable members of the public to easily identify Communication Friendly settings within South Ayrshire.

Our current fully accredited community settings in South Ayrshire are: