What is Penguin?

Penguin is a new mobile app designed to support parents and carers of children who stammer.

Why has Penguin been developed?

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:

• Confusing advice online
• Difficulties accessing support via public healthcare systems
• The high cost of private speech therapy services

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.

What does Penguin aim to do?

Help children who stammer to develop into confident communicators
We want to support differences in children's talking and help each child reach their potential.
Give parents confidence to support their child and themselves
We want to help parents work out how best to support their child’s wellbeing, as well as supporting themselves.
Develop helpful communication habits
The words we use are important. We want to help parents learn how to give helpful messages to children who stammer about talking.
Adapt to each family
We have designed the content in Penguin to be flexible. It can help families make changes that work for them.

Who makes Penguin?

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.