I’m sure you recognise these words. They are the last verse of the very popular hymn “All things bright and beautiful”.

Just imagine having eyes to see the wonderful, beautiful things all around us – like the autumn colours of the leaves – and not being able to express our thoughts in words that others can hear, understand and appreciate. What a huge frustration that would be.

We celebrate the development of our children as we watch for their first steps and listen for their first words. Normally all goes smoothly and well. But for some, this natural development is slow to happen, or incomplete when it does come.

As a family, we know a great deal about the struggles for those who are speech or language impaired. Our daughter, Elizabeth, needed very specialist education and therapy over a very long time so that she could overcome her severe speech and language difficulties. We are so thankful for the dedicated hard work of speech therapists and teachers who have enabled her to be the communicating, independent person she is.

Imagine our sorrow, then, when we heard of the great difficulty being experienced by local families whose very young children desperately need speech therapy, but cannot access this service. This help is needed NOW. A little investment at a very early age will release the child’s speech for a lifetime. Sadly it seems that either there is no money for this service – or that there are not enough speech therapists available – either way, the children are not getting what they desperately need.

If you have speech therapy skills, is there any way that you can offer them to local parents or nurseries or Reception Classes? In a world of words, we need to give to everyone the ability to speak, to give thanks and to communicate clearly.

David Ainge