Early language screening in City and Hackney: work in progress.

The paper describes the initial stages in the development of a screening instrument designed to identify children with impaired language development at the age of 2 1/2 years. The pilot study comprised 40 children seen for routine developmental surveillance at one of the Community Health Centres in City and Hackney District Health Authority. The screen was found to be both sufficiently sensitive and sufficiently specific to warrant further investigation. The discussion highlights a number of pertinent issues which have arisen from the study and which the authors consider to be of relevance to others considering the development of equivalent procedures.