Design of a language stimulation program for children suffering abuse

This article proposes an intervention program, designed specifically for children in residential care who suffer institutionalized abuse, aimed at stimulating their use of language. The objective of the intervention procedure is to improve children's linguistic competence and their socio-affective development, as well as to enable parents to communicate and interact effectively with their children. Several studies have focused on the difficulties children suffering from abuse have with verbal expression and other areas of development. The research stresses the need to set up intervention programs that can improve the linguistic and social competence of children suffering from abuse. With such children, there is a fundamental need to develop a competence that will encourage their adaptive social skills, which are basic skills for interacting socially and which encourage the pragmatic language function, a skill needed for relating to adults and solving interpersonal problems.

Research Highlights
► This study proposes an intervention program for children in residential care.
► Our objective is to improve these children’s linguistic competence.
► The program has been designed so as to be attractive to the children.
► We stress the integration of this program with the curricular project of the schools.
► The program allows us to approach normal language patterns easy to generalize.