Celebrating their 20th birthday is a programme dedicated to the development of children from birth through to four years old.

The Flying Start programme in Monmouth is part of the Welsh Government's flagship early years initiative, designed to give children under the age of four the best possible start in life. The programme supports families by providing a range of free services that promote children's health, learning, and overall development.

Having spent 18 years of that time in the grounds of the former Overmonnow Family Learning Centre, they offer parenting support from prenatal onwards, child development with early language and literacy, all through until the age of four, even dads can get mentoring!

Beth Watkins, Flying Start Manager told the Beacon that they have a small Flying Start team in Monmouth, linking with Gill Nicholas, who was Flying Start practitioner “until she retired, then couldn’t stay away and comes back to volunteer and celebrate the reading work that's going on, devising these lovely sessions with parents and very young children around storytime, activities, painting and songs.

“It’s a core start of everything we do in Flying Start because we do a lot around speech, language and communication development, encouraging the use of books from babies upwards.

“Its a long walk from here to the library for families with small children so we link with the libraries: we have half the activities outside and half inside and having a nursery on the site - Wiggles and Giggles - we know a lot of the children anyway.

“All families are eligible for our services through a referral process or even just attending groups such as the breast-feeding groups and antenatal programmes that all parents can access.

Karen Ferris is an Early Language Speech and Language Therapist, working outside of clinics looking at the public health preventative agenda covering Monmouth, Abergavenny, Chepstow and Caldicot and can take things forward when necessary.

“We put the right measures into place early on to get the foundations right, but there will always be some who need specialist support whatever we do and we make sure we identify those in a timely way and ensure they get specialist speech and language support as well”

“And books are a key part of this”, added Beth. “We buy a lot of books and the children are all being given a book to take home with them today.

“Sometimes it’s not only books, they have things like Waitrose recipe booklets in their kitchen, they also like looking at Screwfix catalogues.

“We run a chatty chimps programme which Karen leads on and walkers and talkers groups for one to two-year-olds, so it’s not just speech and language development, it’s about child development generally.

Karen Ferris added: “It’s about parent support as well because we put the right strategies in and educate the parents on outcomes.”

Beth said that the support starts antenatally and continues up until four years old, “and after four years old, if they need speech and language support then we would signpost that straight away,” added Karen.