I am a paediatric speech and language therapist, or SLT for short. In order to use this protected trading name, I completed a 4 year degree as a Bachelor of Science with honours in 2003 and then completed a year of supervised work when I started practicing. I am also registered with the Health Care Professions Council, and am a member of our governing body, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and the Association of Speech and Language Therapists in Private Practice. In order to adhere to our professional standards, we are expected to continually keep our skills up to date by following current research, learning from others, attending courses, etc.
As a fully qualified SLT, I am able to offer assessment, advice and therapy to children with communication difficulties. Some of these difficulties may include problems with:
- Using a full range of speech sounds
- Saying words in the correct order
- Understanding instructions
- Listening and focusing
- Using words and also being able to put words into sentences
- Play skills
- Social skills/higher level language tasks (such as inferring information)
I most commonly work with children between 2 - 11 years of age. However, if you have a child outside of this age bracket, it is worth contacting me because I have worked with children up to 16 years of age at various times over my career and may well still be able to help.
Following an initial assessment of your child's communication skills, a number of options would be available. These would be discussed with you at the time and will vary from child to child. However, as broad guidelines, these are some of the possible outcomes following the first appointment:
- Therapy sessions
- A programme of activities and/or targets
- A programme of activities and/or targets and suggestion of another appointment in a defined amount of time in order to review progress with the programme
- Nothing! - your child's communication skills may fall within the average range.
This is not an exhaustive list.