Assessment

Our speech and language therapists can assess your child’s voice to determine the impact of the voice disorder on your child as well as looking into the cause. Our speech and language therapists will use the information gained during the assessment process to create an individualised therapy programme tailored to your child’s goals in context of their needs. The aim of therapy will be to target the voice problems identified throughout the assessment.

After an initial appointment has been arranged with one of our team you will be invited to attend an initial assessment. An assessment must be done before therapy commences in order to see what is appropriate for the child and the skills they already have. We can provide a voice assessment in a place that is suitable for you including, the home, clinic, school environment or over Skype. Your options can be discussed with one of our speech and language therapists.

The voice assessment will take approximately 90 minutes depending on the needs and abilities of the child. It will involve a detailed case history, this involves discussing any past medical history, any other input that other health professionals have had, your concerns, the child's goals and any other concerns you may have. This will be a good opportunity for you to discuss anything with the speech and language therapist so that they can make a subjective judgement on the child’s needs, based on your opinions. You may be asked to bring any reports that other health professionals have written to your initial assessment, this will provide the speech and language therapist with lots of useful information that has been discovered from another area of health expertise.

The speech and language therapist will then carry out some activities that are engaging for the child or young person in order to assess their voice. The assessment process will be tailored to the child’s age and interests. This will be more of an objective assessment that will look for evidence of the child’s difficulties in different ways.

Following the assessment the speech and language therapist will write a detailed report of their findings. The report may include some strategies or advice that may be useful to you or some therapy options that will be appropriate for the child.

The purpose of the voice assessment is to allow the speech and language therapist to gather lots of useful information that will inform all of the decisions made following the assessment in regard to your child's voice treatment, this includes:

• Identification of the cause of the voice difficulties.
• Identification of the factors impacting voice.
• Identification of the difficulties faced due to voice difficulties.
• Identification of the impact of the voice difficulty on daily activities.
• Identification of the impact of voice difficulties on child’s academic, emotional and social well-being.
• Identification of the child’s coping strategies.

The assessment may include:

• In depth medical history and background inquiry to determine possible causes or risk factors.
• Perceptual judgement of the client's voice quality by the speech and language therapist.
• Opinions of the client, their friends and family on the client's voice and the impact of the disorder upon their daily life.
• Assessment of laryngeal muscles.
• Measurements of aerodynamics, pitch, resonance, vibratory cycles and overall voice quality.

If you would like any more information on the voice assessments we offer do not hesitate to contact one of our speech and language therapists on office@sltforkids.co.uk or call 0330 088 2298.