We know that parents and carers can worry when a child starts stammering. Penguin gives you immediate support, helping you to navigate the early stages with confidence. Our mission is to keep children communicating confidently and to empower you to make small changes that have a big impact.
Penguin provides guidance and support through a 10-day in-app course that you can work through in your own time. We equip you with the essential knowledge you need to feel secure and confident in your ability to help support your child, and yourself.
With Penguin you’ll learn key ways to support your child and yourself. Short videos explain how to create space for talking about stammering, encouraging confident communication, and ways to help struggle or anxiety.
Penguin gives you flexible ideas so that you can make changes that work best for you and your family. Learn at your own pace and revisit any content to refresh your memory.
Penguin has been developed with the input of Action for Stammering Children, NHS Speech Therapists, people who stammer, and plenty of parents and caregivers.
Penguin content is developed by experts and is based on evidence based practices that have been proven to help support children who stammer and their families.
We know how busy life gets, particularly with young children around. Penguin is designed to fit into busy schedules so even with a hectic schedule you can still feel the benefits.
Penguin is a new mobile app designed to support parents and carers of children who stammer.
Research shows that many parents or carers feel worried when a child begins to stammer and are not sure how to help. Some common problems can make this more difficult. For example:
We made Penguin with these problems in mind. The Penguin app is not a replacement for in-person speech therapy, but it could help parents learn how to support their children during this early stage. Parents don’t cause stammering and they are the best placed people to help their child enjoy talking.
There's no one-practice-fits-all approach. To ingrain new habits, it's important to practice them regularly so we recommend doing a reading exercise each morning and freestyle recordings throughout your day. BeneTalk will track your activity and give you statistics so that you can keep an eye on your progress.
If you have learnt a speech technique in speech therapy, you can use the app to keep on top of your daily practice and work towards your goals.
Penguin is made by a UK-based company called Respira. We are a team of people who stammer, speech therapists, researchers, and engineers. Respira was founded by Jordi Fernandez, a person who stammers. The company aims to improve support for the stammering community through technology.
Our mission has been recognised by Innovate UK and we have collaborated with researchers and speech therapists at the University of Reading. When developing Penguin, we spoke to different groups of people who we think may find the app useful. This included speech and language therapists, parents of children who stammer, and the charities STAMMA and Action for Stammering Children.
Do you have a question we can help you with? Or maybe a suggestion you think we should take on board? Whatever it is, we would love to hear from you.