The local Speech and Language Therapy team is provided by Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.
Speech and Language Therapists have completed a degree in Speech and Language Therapy. They are registered by the Health and Care Professions Council. Their professional body is the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.
They work with children from birth to 19 (in some cases 25 years) with a range of difficulties such as:
- understanding language
- interacting and communicating
- speech sounds
- voice difficulties and
- stammering.
How can they help?
- They are qualified to assess and treat Speech, Language and Communication Needs
- Give advice to you, and the setting your child attends, on how to meet your child’s needs.
- may support you in getting a diagnosis or refer you on to other relevant services for support.
Some Therapists hold an extra qualification to support children with feeding and swallowing difficulties. Their main role is as a consultant. They will guide you to support your child’s speech, language and communication needs. They will do this through assessment and target setting.
Who can refer?
The Speech and Language Therapy service is open to everyone. It is essential all steps have been taken to ensure any contributing factors have been dealt with before referral.
If you are concerned it is always best to discuss with your Health Visitor, nursery or school first. They will be able to share some early advice and ideas to minimise any contributing factors. They have received training from the Speech and Language Therapy Service for early support. Once this advice has been followed, they may suggest a referral to the Speech and Language Therapy Service. They can only make the referral with the parent’s consent. They will need to ask you some questions about your child’s development to complete this.
Following a referral, the service will contact you to provide more information on the support they can provide locally.
They will usually ask you to ‘opt in’ to an available assessment slot. The initial contact may be by telephone, video call or face to face.
At the first appointment:
The Therapist will ask you questions about your child’s development. They will want to know any factors which may help him/her assess your child’s needs. They may assess your child at this first session or may book a further appointment following this discussion with you. When they meet your child they will usually use toys and pictures to assess how well your child interacts, what they are understanding and what kinds of things your child can say.
It may look like the Therapist is ‘just playing’ but this is an informal way of assessing your child’s communication skills. They may use some more detailed assessments or may book further appointments to complete these. They will tell you if they need to see your child again and may give you advice on things to try at home.
Once your child has been assessed:
The Therapist will give you advice of things to try at home. They may want to contact your child’s school or setting to advise on things for the setting too. The role of the Therapist is to assess and guide you to support your child. You are the best person to carry out this practise with your child. The Therapist will set ‘targets’ which are next steps for your child to achieve. The better you practise the targets at home and at a school or nursery the more likely your child will achieve the targets. The Therapist will give you a time frame for how long each target should take and whether a next target is needed. This is unlikely to be weekly as targets take time and practise to achieve.
Some children need extra support to communicate by using signs, symbols, or communication aids. A Speech and Language Therapist will be able to assess if this is necessary and support the child in accessing relevant support systems.
The Therapist may allocate a Speech and Language Therapy Assistant Practitioner to support your child’s targets. They hold a childcare qualification and have received extensive training from the Speech and Language Therapy service. They always work in partnership with your child’s named therapist. They have a wealth of experience working with children with speech, language and communication difficulties.
The Speech and Language Therapy service is a small specialist Service. It is provided for children with very specific speech, language, communication or feeding needs. If your child’s needs can be met by another agency they will be ‘discharged’ or referred elsewhere. When your child no longer needs support from the Service they will be discharged. This means that no input is required at that point. The Therapist will tell you what you should be expecting in the future and, if necessary, at what point a re-referral will be accepted. Discharge should be seen as a positive step and means that all children who need the Service can access it when they need it with no ‘waiting lists’.
What can you do to help?
- Follow any advice your Health Visitor, school nurse or setting give you to build up early communication skills.
- Look up activities and games for younger children on the BBC’s Tiny Happy People website and Stoke Speaks website.
- Share as much relevant information with your Speech Therapist to ensure they can set the right targets.
- Make sure you attend appointments with specialist services and follow any advice they give you. Let them know if you are unable to attend so that your appointment can be re-arranged.
- Practise the things they suggest regularly with your child –this can really help them to progress.
- Make sure your child’s early years setting is in contact with the speech and language therapist so they can put in place the things the Speech and language therapist suggests as part of day-to-day learning. It is good for the early years setting to attend the appointment with the speech and language therapist either ‘virtually’ or face to face.