How can Speech and Language Assessments benefit your child?

A Speech Pathology assessment can be a great first step in understanding your child’s strengths and ongoing needs across the areas of speech sound development, expressive and receptive language, social pragmatic skills, and early literacy skills. These assessments can help to identify goals for intervention and enable strategies and supports to be put in place as early as possible to reduce the likelihood of difficulties continuing throughout childhood and into early adolescence.

Speech Pathology assessments can also support children and adolescents with complex communication needs investigate alternative solutions to communicate their message to others. A Speech Pathologist can work with you and your child to explore different Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices that can assist them to independently communicate and interact with those around them. These assessments are dynamic in nature and will include opportunities for your child to trial different devices to see what works best across different environments. Assessments will also often occur in collaboration with your child’s Occupational Therapist to ensure that they are able to access the device independently and it can easily travel with them throughout the day, whether your child is independently mobile or requires assisted mobility (e.g. wheelchair) to get around.

In addition to the above, Speech Pathology assessments can be completed to assist investigation into a number of developmental diagnoses such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, Specific Learning Disorders (i.e. Dyslexia), and/or Social Communication Disorder. A speech and language assessment is typically completed as a component of a multidisciplinary investigation with other allied health therapists and allows you to have a complete picture of your child’s skills and areas of difficulty across multiple domains, which can be used to support access to NDIS funding or aid in intervention planning.

In summary, a Speech Pathology assessment can provide you with valuable information regarding your child’s speech and language, literacy, and social communication skills and support you with long term intervention planning. These assessments can also assist you to have a greater understanding of how your child communicates best and any aids that can be put in place to increase independent communication with family members, friends, and peers.