Speech therapy

Speech therapy is used to support children who struggle with producing clear speech. Speech therapy can be used to increase children’s speech intelligibility, making it easier to understand them. Speech therapy can be tailored to the exact needs of your child.

Speech therapy can help children develop the skills needed to speak in a manner that can be understood by others, increasing communication skills and developing their academic learning.

Speech therapy is suitable for any child who has difficulty producing clear speech. Some conditions that speech therapy may be suitable for include:

• Autism spectrum disorder
• Acquired head / brain injury
• Cerebral palsy
• Cleft lip and palate
• Developmental delay
• Developmental verbal dyspraxia
• Down's syndrome
• Dysarthria
• Learning disability
• Stroke

A child who struggles to speak clearly and would benefit from speech therapy, may present with the following:

• Difficulty producing certain sounds or words correctly.
• Certain sounds in a word may be substituted, repeated, deleted or added.
• Difficulty being understood by others.
• Avoidance in talking.
• Low confidence levels.
• Increased frustration as others may find it difficult to understand them.
• Change in behavior as they are not being understood.
• Increased use of gestures rather than speech.
• Difficulty with spelling.

Speech therapy would involve working on improving your child’s speech skills. Activities carried out would vary according to your child’s abilities and needs. Our speech and language therapists will try to keep therapy motivating and engaging by integrating your child’s goals and interests.

If your child has speech difficulties the speech and language therapist may choose to work with your child on a one to one basis concentrating on the individual sounds your child is finding difficult to produce. If the speech and language therapist felt your child wasn’t ready for therapy they may choose to work with you on developing techniques to help improve our child’s speech and joint attention skills.

Speech therapy can provide many benefits to your child’s development and daily activities such as:

• Improved intelligibility making it easier for your child to be understood by others.
• Increase in ability to express their thoughts and feelings.
• Increase in communication and social interaction with peers and unfamiliar adults.
• Better access to academic learning.

• Increase in self-esteem.
• Increase in independence.
• Reduced frustration.

Speech therapy can have a range of benefits for your child. It can help provide your child with the skills they need to express their thoughts using clear speech that can be understood by others.

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