We work closely with the Speech and Language Team in North Tyneside

Our speech and language therapy service can support children and young people from birth to 19 who have speech, language or communication needs or difficulties with eating, drinking or swallowing.

These include:

• Stammering, where sounds or words are regularly repeated or a lot of effort is needed to produce them.
• Speaking with a persistently unusual voice quality, which might sound croaky, breathy, or hoarse.
• Difficulties in saying specific sounds when talking making your speech difficult to understand by others.
• Difficulties with speaking, including difficulties putting words and sentences together to ask for something, telling a story or holding a conversation.
• Making sense of what other people say to you and/or understanding and using body language and eye contact.
• Difficulties learning the ‘rules’ of conversation such as when it is your turn to speak and when it is time to change the topic of conversation.
• Feeding or swallowing difficulties.

As well as occurring on their own, these difficulties are common in children and young people who have other diagnoses such as autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, cleft palate, learning, physical or hearing difficulties.

As well as working directly with children and young people we support their families and carers, their teachers or childcare staff and other professionals who have regular contact or work with them.

We carry out assessments, including observations of play, learning activities and will observe meal times for children who are experiencing feeding or swallowing difficulties. We sometimes work with other professionals to help us carry out assessments.

Our aim is to help children and young people develop their best possible communications skills, taking into account their individual abilities and needs.

Most importantly we look at the impact of their communication difficulty on the child, young person’s life, their family and aim to find ways of reducing this as much as possible.

This can include one or a combination of:

• A programme of agreed targets or goals for the child or young person, parents or carers, and other professionals who support them.
• Coaching and education for parents/professionals working with the child or young person on specific communication/feeding techniques.
• Specialist support from a speech and language therapist or assistant speech and language therapist for short periods of time to help develop specific communication skills
• Liaising with other services involved in the child or young person’s care, for example, the feeding team at Royal Victoria Infirmary and Regional Communications Aids Service.

If you are worried about your child's speech, speak to their teacher or to our SENCO.