Children's Speech and Language Therapy
About
Specialist support to children (0-19) with a range of specific speech, language and communication difficulties and those with difficulties swallowing, eating and drinking.
About our service
In Birmingham, we recognise that the most fundamental life skill for children is the ability to communicate. It impacts on their ability to learn, to develop friendships and on their life chances.
As a team, we aim to place children and young people at the heart of delivering speech and language therapy services. We aim to develop and deliver evidence –based functional interventions in partnership with children and young people, their families and others around them.
We recognise that Birmingham is a vibrant and diverse city and as such work to ensure that all elements of our service offer culturally and linguistically appropriate support.
The Speech and Language Therapy service values multilingualism and the positive advantages of using your home language with children. We are able to work alongside interpreters and are able to access a diverse range of languages. Should you or the families you work with need an interpreter please let us know the languages spoken in the home environment on the referral form and/or at the time of booking an appointment.
Who we are
Our NHS SLT Service consists of a large team of committed speech and language therapists, assistants and student speech and language therapists working across the whole city of Birmingham. Wherever you are there will be a Speech and Language Therapy clinic/service near you.
All of our speech and language therapists are registered with the Health and Care Professions Council. As a service we are committed to ensuring we are providing evidence-based high quality support and interventions. Within our service we have a number of advanced practitioner speech and language therapists who develop and support our team in key specialist areas, through clinical supervision.
We are committed to contributing to the development of the next generation of Speech and Language Therapists (SLT) and actively support the training of SLT students. SLT students/trainees work under the guidance and supervision of senior SLTs and are involved in all aspects of our work.
Who do we see?
We will work with children with speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN) including:
• difficulties understanding and using language
• speech sound disorders
• stammering
• voice disorders
• augmentative and alternative communication needs (AAC)
• eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties
This list is by no means exhaustive. See further pages for more details about some of the areas mentioned above.
How we work
Across Birmingham, our Speech and Language Therapists work with parents/carers, early years settings, nurseries, academies and schools to support children and young people with identified speech, language and communication needs (SLCN).
We know that working with children and families on an individual basis is only a small part of the support a child may need. Speech, language and communication happen throughout the day, everyday. We recognise that one of the best ways of helping your child is to support them to develop speech, language and communication skills for life on a daily basis in real time communication situations. Helping them to talk at the times and in the places they want and need to talk.
If your child is nursery age, we are aiming to run regular drop-in sessions led by Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) in your local area. At the sessions, the SLT will listen to your concerns, suggest advice and agree the level of help that your child needs. These will initially be offered as booked appointments to children known to our service but will start to become available as open drop-ins in the New Year. The website will be updated to keep everyone informed.
If your child is school age, and attends a Birmingham Local Authority mainstream or special school, there will be a Link SLT for each school who will work with you and the school to agree what level of support your child needs.
When working with parents, carers, teaching staff and other key people, we want to enable children with SLCN to:
- express themselves, be understood by others and be able to understand what others say to them;
- be able to participate in everyday communication activities that are important to them and their families;
- be involved in decisions that affect them.
We want to help families of children with SLCN to understand their child’s needs and have the knowledge and skills to support their child’s speech, language, communication and/or eating and drinking development.
We want to help teaching staff and key people in the child’s education/learning setting to understand, respond to and support children’s speech, language, communication and eating & drinking needs.
Ages and stages
Individual children can vary enormously in the rate at which they learn to speak and communicate. The below links will provide you with information that will give a guide about what you might expect your child to be doing at any given age.
Further details around ages and stages of development.