Early literacy intervention: developing identification techniques for use with 'treatment resisters'

This paper reports on the early stages of a project which aims to address the needs of a group of children who, in today's literate society, are likely to find themselves with the severe, persistent and wide-ranging disadvantage of lacking an adequate level of literacy. Recently developed measures of early pre-literacy screening can be used to identify children at risk of reading difficulties, which means that early intervention can be implemented. However, current indications are that intervention is not successful for everyone. Children who fail to benefit have been described as 'Treatment Resisters'. Currently these children are likely to have considerably restricted access to the curriculum. The project aims to identify the characteristics which differentiate treatment resisters from those children who benefit from early phonological based intervention and from children not considered to be at risk of difficulties. The project aims to develop guidelines for the early identification of likely treatment resisters and for an associated programme of intervention.