Early identification is crucial in order to provide appropriate and timely support. If you think your child might have speech, language and communication needs, you should first talk to a professional involved with your child. This could be, for example, a:
- health visitor
- GP
- pre-school staff member
- school staff member
- speech and language therapist
- community paediatrician
The Speech and Language Therapy Team at Children and Family Health Devon (CFHD) outlines a process that you can follow, starting with ways to check your child’s development and ideas you can try at home to help with difficulties your child might be having. You can also find lots of helpful advice and resources on the CFHD Facebook page for pre-school age children and Facebook page for school age children.
The ‘Let’s Get Chatting’ campaign in Devon provides key messages to parents about speech, language and communication for their children. The resources available include advice about when to be concerned about your child’s development and who to talk to.
The Speech and Language UK website have a couple of useful resources too:
- Their age and stages pages provide information on how children learn to talk and understand words, as well as guidance on ‘typical’ language development.
- They also have a progress checker tool, to help you check the progress of your child’s speech and language development based on typical developmental milestones for children up to age 11.
Please note that these resources are intended to be used as guides only and any concerns you have should be shared with one of the professionals listed above.