More than words:Hello October

The Hello theme for October is 'more than just words'. Often people don't realise that Speech and language therapists work with people who don't talk or have little speech.  Check out  http://www.communicationmatters.org.uk/ where you will find  information on methods of communication which can be used to supplement the more usual methodsof speech and writing. These methods are called Augmentative and Alternative Communication, or AAC for short.

Communication Matters is a UK wide organisation and helps people of all ages and ability who need to use AAC.

They are supporting a range of exciting AAC events and activities across the UK, linked to the 'Hello'campaign in the National Year of Communication.

Communication Matters is leading a groundbreaking research project to gather evidence about theneed and provision of AAC, and is also involved in developing and publishing National Standards for AAC services. We have been in touch with the project co-ordinator and will be featuring the conclusions of this project in a future edition of S & L World:the global bulletin for SLT/SLP

Would you like to be your own boss as a Smart Talkers franchisee?

All children can benefit from our award winning pre-school communication groups. They are designed to help develop confident, successful communicators. Spoken language skills are the basis for most educational tasks so the better the speech, language and communication skills the easier they will find it when they start school.

We use puppets, games, stories and songs to make it as fun as possible. We get great feedback from parents, carers and the children themselves! It's not really like working, as it's tremendous fun working with pre-school children.

We are looking for franchisees in many areas of the UK or further afield. No experience or qualification required as full training is given. Business support and back-up is an important part of the package

See www.smarttalkers.org.uk for more information or check out our video.

Smart Talkers Pre-School Communication Groups: a glimpse into what we do

I was sorting through some of the photos that Sara from Sara Moseley Photography had taken last year of a group at Horn End Nursery Rugeley. I used some for an exhibition in Birmingham but they are far too good to hide away so I've put a few into a slideshow which introduces what we do at Smart Talkers Pre-school groups






The groups are franchised and we have franchisees, so far, in Cambridge, Singapore and India. Smart Talkers Surrey is just starting her training and we are in talks with someone in New York, Japan and Sussex.


No previous experience is necessary as all training and support is given. As you can see from the slideshow, it's a fantastic privilege to be able to work with pre-schoolers in this way!


For more information www.smarttalkers.org.ukwww.smarttalkers.org.uk

Is my child with ASD too young for therapy?

This is a contentious issue with many Speech Therapy Departments not seeing youngsters until 3 years of age. I came across the report of an American study which  shows that children with autistic spectrum disorder appear to benefit from early, intensive therapy to improve their social and communication skills.

"It's important for children with autism to begin treatment as soon as possible," Micah Mazurek, assistant professor in the School of Health Professions and the Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders at the University of Missouri. said, "The more intense or comprehensive the therapy, the better it is in terms of helping children improve social and communication skills."

People with an autism spectrum disorder have problems understanding, interacting and relating to others. For the study, researchers measured 15 social-communication skills of more than 1,000 autistic children and teenagers, including facial expressions, gestures, language comprehension, sharing enjoyment and appropriate social responses.

Although 95 percent of the kids showed improvement in these skills over time, the study found that those who received behavioral, speech and occupational therapy had better results.

Moreover, the children who received more intensive treatment at a younger age showed the most improvement in their social-communication abilities, the researchers said. Those with higher nonverbal IQs had the best response to therapy, they found.

"With regard to social-communicative symptom severity, our study reveals that it is not IQ alone that contributes to improvements over time," said Mazurek. "Instead, having a higher IQ may allow children to make greater gains in various types of treatments." The results also indicate a need to develop alternative treatment approaches for children with intellectual impairments, Mazurek added. The study concluded that targeted, intensive treatments may be most successful in improving specific skills among autistic children.

The study will be published in the next issue of Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders .

Related articles

• Children with autism benefit from early, intensive therapy (esciencenews.com)
• Children with autism benefit from early, intensive therapy (eurekalert.org)
• Early, Intensive Therapy Helps Children With Autism (medicalnewstoday.com)

Did your school take part in no pens day today?

George being excited!

It was officially a day when schools should not use pens, rather the children talk and listen to mark the September theme for the Hello campaign. Unfortunately, as with everything the take up for this was not brilliant. In fact of the 10 schools to whom I mentioned it, only one took up the idea. St Peters C E School in Hixon bravely decided to go pen-less! My son was really excited at the prospect and was actually looking forwards to going to school (he's not the most keen under normal circumstances, which is nothing to do with the excellent school he attends, I might add!)

On the way home we had a great chat about what it must be like to be unable to speak or to have difficulty understanding what is said to you. Although he is well aware that as a speech and language therapist, I work with children with problems he had not really thought about the implications for the individuals concerned. If today has made just a few more children think about how dreadful it must be then it has been a success in my book. After all 1 in every 7 has a specific difficulty while 'many, many more' (Gross 2010) will be experiencing a delay which will hinder written language learning.

Join in with the activities of the Hello campaign at www.hello.org.uk