What is the narrative intervention programme?

What is the narrative intervention programme?

The narrative intervention programme (NIP), is a small group language intervention designed by the speech and language therapy service in Sheffield to develop your child’s ability to sequence their ideas to retell a story, or something that has happened to them, which is known as a narrative.

The programme aims to develop the core skills required for developing your child’s ability to retell the story with a good structure that includes the right information.

What is narrative?

Narrative involves the ability to connect language to tell a story, fact or fiction. It is important for understanding the world and for understanding ourselves and our own experiences. It is also a very important skill for telling people about something that has happened. For example, after an incident.

Difficulties being able to tell a story, including difficulty remembering or including details, can be perceived as an individual ‘changing their story’ or potentially ‘lying’. It is therefore important that strategies are used to support an individual recall what happened before jumping to conclusions.

Children or young people with narrative difficulties may have difficulty:

• Putting their ideas in the right order. For example, what happened first, next and last
• Remembering to include important elements of ‘what happened’. For example who, where, when, what people said
• Using the right vocabulary

In addition to children or young people with a language disorder, individuals with a range of diagnoses may struggle with this area of communication due to their profile of needs. For example, attention or hyperactivity, memory or retention, social communication or inferencing skills and emotional dysregulation can all impact on individual’s ability to remember and recall what has happened to them.

It is important to note that children or young people, who have difficulty with this area of their communication will need ongoing support to retell stories or events, as every new experience will be different and will likely include unfamiliar or new vocabulary.