Speech group

Our speech group helps children who find it difficult to produce and recognize different speech sounds on an individual sound level, word level and conversational level. The group aims to increase children’s speech production and awareness skills. Our speech and language therapists deliver therapy in small groups using interactive and motivating activities, tailored to the ages and stages of development of the children attending the group.

Our speech and language therapists will initially assess the children’s speech skills to determine which area of their speech requires development, and apply activities and strategies to enable this. Through improving speech sound production, a child’s speech becomes more intelligible to others, or through increasing speech sound discrimination children become more aware of the different sounds used in a word.

Our speech and language therapists aim to improve speech sound development in all children attending our speech group. Our aims include:

• Improving recognition and production of individual speech sounds, blends and whole words.
• Eliminating delayed or deviant phonological errors.
• Increasing overall intelligibility of the child’s speech.
• To expand children’s phonological errors.

This will be attained in a motivating and engaging environment with a variety of activities that are suitable for the children’s age and level of development. Therapy will be given in a group setting of four children across a 1 hour therapy session.

This group is suitable for children who have difficulty with any of the following:

• Children who have difficulty producing clear speech that can be understood by others.
• Children who have difficulty producing certain speech sounds or word blends.
• Children who have difficulty recognising different speech sounds.
• Children who struggle with coordination needed for speech.
• Children who are producing phonological errors that are not typical for their age.

Children attending the group can be pre-school or school aged, but children within a group should preferably not be more than one year apart.

Our speech group will include a mixture of adult led activities as well as motivational games to increase the child’s correct production and recognition of speech sounds at different levels. Activities at the start of the group therapy program will work on the child recognising and producing speech sounds at an individual level. As the group progress our speech and language therapist will target phonological errors in word production.

Our speech and language therapists take a multi-sensory approach to learning new speech sounds as this allows the child to process the sound in different manners. As well as giving them the ability to clarify if they can differentiate between different speech sounds, even if they cannot differentiate in verbal production. Groups will be led by a qualified speech and language therapist, and will be applied over a 6 week period. Each child attending the group will receive a full individual report and a certificate following completion of speech group.

Our speech group provides an opportunity for children to improve their speech skills in a safe and pleasant manner. Benefits of our speech group include:

• Improved speech clarity making it easier for the child to be understood by others.
• Improved recognition and production of speech sounds.
• Decrease use of phonological errors.
• Increased motor coordination skills.
• Increased social communication.
• Increased self esteem.
• A safe environment to use their new speech sound skills.

Our speech and language therapists run phonic groups throughout the school year. Children will leave the group with improved speech intelligibility, making them easier to be understood and boosting their self-esteem.

If you are interested in finding out more information about our speech groups, please email office@sltforkids.co.uk or call us on 0330 088 2298.