Therapy Box, is a leading collaborative project using Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising sites to encourage parents to download Language Explorer – a fun storytelling app that will also help speech and language therapists in the future identify children with a developmental language disorder. The two-week OOH campaign was booked direct with JCDecaux UK’s Nurture programme, and is part of the company’s prize after it won Virgin Media Business’ Voom national business pitching competition.
The campaign will run across 6-sheet bus shelter posters UK-wide from June 15th, the day that classic (paper) Out-of-Home media returns to the UK’s town centres and major roads as lockdown gradually eases, providing Therapy Box with a widespread communications’ channel.
Therapy Box hopes parents from across the country will download the Language Explorer app and use it for a fun and engaging story session with their child. Their experience will help train the app to be used by speech and language therapists to help them evaluate children having trouble with their language, so benefiting thousands of other children in the future.
Developmental language disorders affect 8% of children in the UK and it is vital that speech and language therapists have the tools to evaluate difficulties with language. As a result of winning Virgin Media Business’ Voom competition, we were able to work with JCDecaux’s Nurture programme to access Outdoor advertising sites across the UK, to prompt downloads of the Language Explorer app that we believe will improve outcomes for children across the country in the future.Rebecca Bright from Therapy Box
Using the Language Explorer app with their parents, each child will watch a fun animated story and will then be asked to tell the story in their own words. The child will be asked questions about the story and will be asked to repeat some sentences. The app records children’s responses to this story retell, comprehension and a repetition task.
The app is funded by the National Institute for Health Research’s Invention for Innovation programme. Partners in the Therapy Box project include Sirona CiC, North Bristol NHS Trust and Newcastle University.
Therapy Box was crowned a winner of Voom, the UK and Ireland’s biggest business pitching competition, in 2018 where it scooped a share of a £1million prize fund including a five figure cash prize, an Out-of-Home advertising campaign and an extensive package of mentoring and services to help them accelerate and grow their business.
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