What is speech and language therapy?
Speech and language therapists are qualified healthcare professionals who provide assessment and intervention for clients’ with various speech, language, communication and feeding needs.
At Strides Therapy Clinic we provide private paediatric speech and language therapy sessions with a qualified speech and language therapist who is trained to work with multiple speech, language and communication difficulties. This usually involves the speech and language therapist meeting with the child and their family and assessing the child’s speech, language and communication abilities and feeding methods in order to look at whether communication difficulties are physical, cognitive or psychological related.
Who do we work with?
Speech and language therapists work with speech related difficulties that can accompany conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder or Down Syndrome, speech issues such as speech delay, expressive and/or receptive language delay, stammers, voice disorders, specific language impairment etc., and feeding based difficulties such as dysphagia.
Working closely with the client, their families and other members of the multidisciplinary team, the speech and language therapist helps clients to communicate to the best of their ability by developing a functional treatment programme. They often implement home programmes that work on developing a child’s feeding abilities and/or verbal communication. Alternatively for children whose verbal skills are delayed or limited they work on developing other means of communication such assisted aided systems e.g. PECS, iPad apps or teaching the family and child how to use Lamh sign language. Part of the speech and language therapist’s job involves educating the family on the importance of communication for the child and providing strategies to develop the family’s communication skills to in turn help the child.
When to seek assistance
If your child has any of the difficulties listed below then speech and language therapy may be an appropriate therapy for them.
- Speech Delay
- Speech that is hard to decipher and understand
- Difficulties with combining words to form sentences
- Difficulties initiating and holding conversations
- Trouble engaging with others, particularly their own peers
- Difficulties following instructions and commands
- Difficulties re-calling or sequencing of stories
- Becoming upset and frustrated when attempting to communicate
- Difficulties with pronunciation of certain sounds or words
- Limited vocabulary for their age
- Difficulties with fluency
- Difficulties with voice i.e. hoarseness, low voice tone
- Rate of speech