With very young children therapy very often takes the form of parent counselling, enabling them to support their children’s development at home. Intervention activities for older children and teenagers encompass a wide range of games, stories, rhymes, music, arts, exercises and tasks that make language learning enjoyable and fun.

Which problems do we treat?

Speech:
Speech disorders refer to difficulties producing speech sounds. They are also called articulation disorders. Listeners often have trouble understanding what someone with a speech disorder is trying to say.

Language:
A language disorder is an impairment in the ability to understand and/or use words in context, both verbally and nonverbally. Some characteristics of language disorders include improper use of words and their meanings, inability to express ideas, inappropriate grammatical patterns, reduced vocabulary and inability to follow directions. One or a combination of these characteristics may occur in children who are affected by a developmental language delay. Sometimes a person will have greater receptive (understanding) than expressive (speaking) language skills, but this is not always the case. Some children have difficulties with language acquisition because they grow up in a bilingual environment.

Communication:

Communication disorders involve semantic-pragmatic disorders, autistic spectrum disorders and acquired neurological disorders such as Aphasia. People with communication disorders have trouble getting others to understand what they are trying to communicate. This involves spoken language as well as body language.

Fluency:

Fluency disorders are characterised by an interruption in the flow or rhythm of speech, such as stuttering/stammering, which is also called dysfluency.

Voice:

People with voice disorders have trouble with the way their voice sounds. They may have difficulties with the pitch, volume or quality of the voice and often experience hoarseness and even loss of voice.