Celebrating the official opening of our clinic

Please make this go viral!! It's a great cause

Last week, AFASIC  launched #HumForAfasic social media campaign to raise awareness of speech, language and communication needs. In an effort to ‘go viral’ and spread the word on SLCN and the work of Afasic, they are using Facebook as a tool and hope that many of their members, supporters, friends and staff will get involved.

The idea of the challenge is to video yourself humming a song, upload it to Facebook and nominate some friends to guess your song and do their own video. This is also a great opportunity to raise some much-needed funding for Afasic, so we have set up a text code where people can donate £3 by texting ‘HUMA50 £3’ TO 70070.

They chose humming to demonstrate the difficulties many children with SLCN face on a day to day basis, while also being a fun challenge.  We'll be uploading our attempt shortly!

Please join in with the #HumForAfasic challenge. Let’s get humming!

For any questions about how to get involved, please email Victoria Ward or call on 0207 490 9410.

Sequencing - not just writing stories!

Every week I receive phone calls from parents asking me to work with their child, often stating that they can talk 'fine' it just some speech sound errors. On first meeting the child I can see that yes the child does have some problems with speech sounds and is talking in full sentences, but on closer inspection realise that much of what the child is saying doesn't make a lot of sense. Children often struggle to plan and organise their ideas in a logical way, which results in the listener finding it difficult to follow what they are trying to say and is often the result of a sequencing problem. The ability to sequence doesn't just correspond to narrative skills, but encompasses all areas of language development including; speaking, understanding, thinking, reading and writing.

To keep up with the increasing demand from children to include some technology based activities in therapy I have recently discovered some fabulous iPad Apps from Colorcards, which help me to target sequencing problems and the interactive activities are both motivating and engaging for children of all ages.

When working with either a group or individual children I like to use the 'Everyday Objects' app first to ensue the child is able to describe the pictures accurately, as a foundation skill to sequencing. All three sequence apps ie 'Basic', '4-step' and '6&8 step' are definitely worth investing in, as it is vital to ensue the child fully understands the concepts of first, next and last in a simple three part sequence, before you can expect them to build up to large sequences and then eventually prediction. The added extra of an accessible report template is quick to use and enables me to comprehensively track progress throughout the therapy process.

Each app has the great ability to set up multiple student accounts which can be tailored to target individual difficulties and goals. Differentiating between three levels (easy, medium, hard) is fantastic for building confidence with even low level abilities and being able to input your own images supports the child to be fully engaged in their own learning. Often some of the children I come into contact with have had limited and varying life experiences, so the option of creating your own story sequences ensures these apps are accessible to everyone.

Natasha Hallam

Myths and mis-information:tongue tie

1. 'Tongue-tie (ankyloglossia) happens when the string of tissue under your baby's tongue (frenulum), which attaches her tongue to the floor of her mouth, is too short. If your baby has tongue-tie, her tongue can't move freely, and this can cause problems (NICE 2005a)'
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3. I had a conversation this week with teacher who was saying that a child should have had his tongue tie snipped ages ago because now its been done, he can talk. She attributed his recent progress to that fact. Trouble is, he wasn't saying anything but a  few single words before and had an understanding at around a single word level, aged 5.Therefore, it was a language issue and nothing to do with his tongue tie!
4. I also saw a child today who had speech sound difficulties which had been attributed to a tongue tie.Trouble is, he has no word initial sounds and can say 't' and 'd' beautifully. Therefore, its a speech processing issue not the articulation problem of not being able to move his tongue. 
5. I see a boy with a tongue tie who is silent ...but he has Selective Mutism so the tongue tie is irrelevant!
6. The NHS website has lots of information but in essence, if it is severe enough to restrict the baby's ability to breast feed then its worth having it snipped but otherwise, there's probably no real point, in most cases. The movement required to successfully breast feed is more than enough to produce the placement necessary for speech sounds.
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Our new Speech, Language and Communication Centre is now open!

We are happy to have a new centre, to which families can come to see us from further away. We already have  families from West Yorkshire, North Wales, Sussex, Surrey and Buckinghamshire booked in. I've just taken  call from someone in France who wants to come too!

We will have an official opening ceremony soon but meantime here's a preview:

 Can you spot Ralph, the therapy dog waiting at the door. He's happy to welcome anyone but especially enjoys working with children with ASD and Selective Mutism. There's a safe place for him if you don't like dogs though.

 This is the reception area where you can wait with a coffee. There's toys and books for the children and magazines for the adults.

From reception you go through into the  therapist's room. Its full of toys but these can be screened off if they're too distracting.

This is the training room below but it's also a multi-purpose room as the tables fold away. We might use this room for very distractible younger ones or for older ones who don't want to be in a play-type room.

We are happy to see people from all over so please get in touch if you think there's anything we can help with.

June 2015 SEND Reforms Survey

The Communication Trust is committed to supporting all those working within the reformed SEND system to meet the needs of children and young people with SLCN and their families. As part of this work, they undertook two online surveys in June and November 2014 to find out how practitioners, service providers and commissioners were preparing for and implementing the SEND Reforms. They used the valuable information gained from these surveys to ensure we are able to offer relevant support to those working with children and young people with SLCN in the areas they report needing it most.
 

They are now running a third survey  across June 2015, to find out more about the perceived opportunities and remaining challenges of the reformed SEND system for children and young people with SLCN, almost a whole academic year on from the reforms coming into effect. The survey will take less than 10 minutes to complete and we would be extremely grateful if you would take the time to complete it and pass the link on to your colleagues and networks to help get the broadest response possible.
 

The survey will be open from 29th May - 29th June 2015 and is available here: www.surveymonkey.com/s/sendreformsforslcn2015.

Billy: Born Naughty? Channel 4 series 1 episode 4

 I was asked to assess Billy as part of the programme 'Born Naughty?' to see what might be causing his bad behaviour at home and more recently at nursery. He had already been seen by the Paediatrician Dr Ravi Jayaram who had made some important observations.

Billy aged 3 years, along with his Mum and Grandmother came to a children's centre which was local to me but was a good 3 hours drive from their home. I played with him a for a short time and then screened his spoken language skills. I was looking for: his attention level, listening ability, auditory memory, understanding level (information carrying words), vocabulary, verbal reasoning and expressive language. I was also looking for his social communication/pragmatic skills which includes three major communication skills:

        Using language for different purposes, such as

§       greeting (e.g. hello, goodbye)
§       informing (e.g. I'm going home)
§       demanding (e.g. Take me home)
§       promising (e.g. I'm going to take you home)
§       requesting (e.g. I would like to go home, please)

Following rules for conversations and storytelling, such as

§       taking turns in conversation
§       introducing topics of conversation 
§       staying on topic
§       starting conversations appropriately
§       finishing conversations e.g. not walking away mid-sentence
§       how to use and read verbal and nonverbal signals
§       how close to stand to someone when speaking
§       how to use facial expressions and eye contact

It also includes Modifying language according to the needs of a listener or situation (for older children but Billy is too young for this), such as
§       giving background information to an unfamiliar listener
§       speaking differently in a classroom than on a playground
 

He coped really well with the assessment and scored highly on everything. I'd also put out a variety toys to see what the level of his play was like. His pretend play was amazing: he used lego as soup, made Batman and Robin from square shapes and pretended with imaginary toys too.

His family were concerned that he might have Autism as his uncle has  a diagnosis of ASD. They were worried that his behaviour was due to this. However, if we look at the older way of looking at ASD: i.e. the triad of impairment of language ability, social communication and flexibility, Billy scores so highly as to void any suggestion of ASD, this, together with Ravi's observations, meant I did not therefore do any formal ASD assessment. His mum is to be congratulated on a fantastic job done!

We needed to look for an different explanation of the behaviour and called in the wonderful Deb Sugden, sleep expert. 

www.libbyhillspeechtherapist.co.uk