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This is a common question for many people looking to book a speech pathology appointment. The real answer to this question is actually anyone. If you have a concern regarding your child or yourself, you can call a speech pathology clinic to book an appointment without a referral from another profession. While there are referrals you can get for speech pathology which entitle you to Medicare rebates, you do not need a referral to see a speech pathologist.

In order to receive a Medicare rebate for speech pathology session though, you do need a referral from either a general practitioner or a paediatrician. Both these health care providers can provide you with a care plan to receive rebates.

Often the first point of contact with a health care professional will be either a General Practitioner or Paediatrician however; you or your child may be examined by your GP for an Ear Nose and Throat assessment. An ENT specialist may then send you for a hearing assessment with an Audiologist to ensure there are no hearing difficulties at play. Both these health care professionals are important in determining the cause of a speech or language delay and once you attend a visit with a Speech Pathologist you may be sent to see either an ENT specialist or Audiologist. So it is useful to come prepared with results from both, if you have already completed these visits. The reason for this is that hearing difficulties may be the reason for a communication delay and will need to be addressed to help rectify the issue. Similarly, an adult may find that they have lost their voice and a check up of their throat with an ENT specialist may identify a structural change that requires addressing to assist with their communication difficulty.

For children, childcare workers and teachers may be the point of referral. While they are not health care professionals, they encounter many children on a daily basis and can give you an indication of how your child is progressing compared to other children their age. They can also identify issues that your child might be having which you may not notice yourself. This is a very common occurrence as you are more likely to be familiar with your child’s way of communicating and therefore can understand the message they are trying to get across more easily.

If your child has been referred for a speech pathology assessment by a childcare worker, ENT specialist, teacher or Audiologist; be sure to visit your GP to get an enhanced primary care plan or EPC referral so you can receive a Medicare Rebate where applicable.

Contact us for results focused speech therapy

This article was written by our Speech Pathologist Ashleigh Fattah who is a Speech Pathology Australia member. If you have speech pathology related questions, make an appointment. We‘ll provide you with simple and effective therapy targeted to your concerns. Contact us today.

The post Who can refer you to a speech pathologist? appeared first on ENT Wellbeing Sydney.

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One of the most popular misconceptions about children with speech and language delay is that taking a ‘wait and see’ approach cannot hurt. While this approach may not lead to anything life threatening, it can have serious repercussions for a child’s entire future following poor performance at school leading to decreased opportunities in further education, career and employment.

Here are a few examples of a child’s delayed language skills influencing their performance at school:

  • If a child is unable to understand basic concepts (e.g. before, after, then, same, different, or, between), they will have difficulties following a number of instructions given by their teachers and educators in the classroom and on the playground
  • e.g. “Put your books away before you get a test paper” or “Make sure to pick up a question sheet that is the same colour as your answer sheet”.
  • In both these cases, not understanding the instruction can lead to having a book open while completing a test, which may be misconstrued as cheating, and while this may not have been intentional, this means the child will already present in a negative light.
  • A child who is unable to follow multiple step instructions may have difficulty completing their schoolwork. They may complete the first step however, they be unaware that there is more work to be done. This inability to complete their work will affect the child’s grades. These kids are often the ones who are seen as disruptive as they become bored once they have “completed” the task, then wander off to do something else and distract others around them.
  • Those children who have difficulty answering ‘wh’ questions will often be unable to answer simple questions their teacher asks them, such as “whose bag is this?” or “Where did you put your book?” They will also be unable to answer questions in tests such as “Who is the main character or “If I have two apples and you have three apples, how many apples we have together?”.

These are just a few of the many difficulties a child with language delay may experience in the classroom and although they may not intend to be the disruptive child, it is a slippery slope for a child that is unable to participate in class due to these setbacks.  Early intervention is the key to bridging the gap and ensuring your child is able to learn and develop at school and socially with others to their best ability.

Contact us for results focused speech therapy

This article was written by our Speech Pathologist Ashleigh Fattah who is a Speech Pathology Australia member. If you have speech pathology related questions, make an appointment. We‘ll provide you with simple and effective therapy targeted to your concerns. Contact us today.

The post The impact of language delay at school appeared first on ENT Wellbeing Sydney.

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There are a number or speech errors, also know as phonological processes, that normally developing children produce. These include substitutions of back sounds, which are harder to produce, e.g. K and G sounds, for front sounds, e.g. T and D sound, causing them to say a word like ‘cat’ as ‘tat’. Children may also voice a sound, which does not require voicing, e.g. the ‘k’ in ‘dock’ when voiced may sound like ‘dog’.

Another common error is deleting one sound within a cluster such as the ‘st’ cluster without the ‘s’ which would turn a word such as ‘star’ into ‘tar’. Alternatively, the child may delete a sound at the start or at the end of a word and instead produce a word like ‘cat’ as ‘ca’.

Processes such as these are normal around 3-4 years of age however if these errors are present after this age, sometimes the child’s representation of the sound has been distorted during this time and when they attempt to pair the sound with a letter, their poor awareness of this sound causes spelling errors.

Some common examples of these spelling errors may include;

  • Substitution of sounds for the error sound they used to produce or deleting the sound entirely. This may cause a child to spell the word ‘cat’ or ‘tat’ and the word ‘dock’ may be spelt as ‘dog’.
  • Deleting sounds within a word when sounding out to spell.

This may look like ‘star’ being spelled as ‘sar’ or ‘cat being spelt as ‘ca’ or ‘at’

Errors such as these require specific speech pathology intervention targeted at improving sound awareness. This type of intervention improves a child’s ability to detect the sounds within a word, and manipulate these sounds in their head without the use of letters. For this reason, we refer to these phonological awareness skills as pre-literacy skills.

Once your child has mastered the ability to detect and manipulate the sounds without the symbolic alphabet letters, these same skills are then applied with the letters to detect and manipulate written words. This in turn allows them to correctly spell words and detect spelling mistakes they have made in order to self-correct independently.

Contact us for results focused speech therapy

This article was written by our Speech Pathologist Ashleigh Fattah who is a Speech Pathology Australia member. If you have speech pathology related questions, make an appointment. We‘ll provide you with simple and effective therapy targeted to your concerns. Contact us today.

The post How speech delay can impact reading and spelling appeared first on ENT Wellbeing Sydney.

By

There are a number or speech errors, also know as phonological processes, that normally developing children produce. These include substitutions of back sounds, which are harder to produce, e.g. K and G sounds, for front sounds, e.g. T and D sound, causing them to say a word like ‘cat’ as ‘tat’. Children may also voice a sound, which does not require voicing, e.g. the ‘k’ in ‘dock’ when voiced may sound like ‘dog’.

Another common error is deleting one sound within a cluster such as the ‘st’ cluster without the ‘s’ which would turn a word such as ‘star’ into ‘tar’. Alternatively, the child may delete a sound at the start or at the end of a word and instead produce a word like ‘cat’ as ‘ca’.

Processes such as these are normal around 3-4 years of age however if these errors are present after this age, sometimes the child’s representation of the sound has been distorted during this time and when they attempt to pair the sound with a letter, their poor awareness of this sound causes spelling errors.

Some common examples of these spelling errors may include;

  • Substitution of sounds for the error sound they used to produce or deleting the sound entirely. This may cause a child to spell the word ‘cat’ or ‘tat’ and the word ‘dock’ may be spelt as ‘dog’.
  • Deleting sounds within a word when sounding out to spell.

This may look like ‘star’ being spelled as ‘sar’ or ‘cat being spelt as ‘ca’ or ‘at’

Errors such as these require specific speech pathology intervention targeted at improving sound awareness. This type of intervention improves a child’s ability to detect the sounds within a word, and manipulate these sounds in their head without the use of letters. For this reason, we refer to these phonological awareness skills as pre-literacy skills.

Once your child has mastered the ability to detect and manipulate the sounds without the symbolic alphabet letters, these same skills are then applied with the letters to detect and manipulate written words. This in turn allows them to correctly spell words and detect spelling mistakes they have made in order to self-correct independently.

Contact us for results focused speech therapy

This article was written by our Speech Pathologist Ashleigh Fattah who is a Speech Pathology Australia member. If you have speech pathology related questions, make an appointment. We‘ll provide you with simple and effective therapy targeted to your concerns. Contact us today.

The post How speech delay can impact reading and spelling appeared first on ENT Wellbeing Sydney.

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In a previous blog, I reviewed the Spalding program for literacy. This teaching method has been used successfully for half a decade and is very effective for students that struggle to read and write. The traditional method is excellent for older students that have greater levels of concentration. However it can be somewhat dry and unengaging when used with younger children, especially those with dyslexia or struggle with working memory and concentration. I have recently come across the Nessy resources, which use similar rules and principals to the traditional Spalding program in a fun and interactive way.

The programme incorporates a number of different techniques to ensure that literacy is fun and engaging including.

Features of the Nessy Learning Programme

  • Colourful and engaging animated videos with memorable stories and characters around the letters and letter groups. Each video links back to worksheets, games and activities, which incorporate the characters within the videos.
  • Fun games that incorporate the different rules and strategies that make literacy learning enjoyable and easier to learn. The games can be played as one player such puzzles that require the student to fit the pieces of the word together or multiplayer such as card games that can be played with others.
  • Different levels specifically targeting students with a range of skills. This ensures that each student is working at the right level and is able to achieve some success while still being challenged to learn new information. There are even tasks for those learners that struggle with sounding out basic, high frequency words like ‘on’ and ‘at’ so that success can be achieved even for very early readers.
  • Worksheets that incorporate well known and functional games such as cross words and find a word puzzles as well as true or false puzzles.
  • As students progress through the program and complete tasks, they unlock new games, characters and magical worlds to continue their literacy adventure.

Nessy – Help for Children With Dyslexia

The Nessy Learning Programme is an interactive, multi-media computer program, that enables students who have difficulties with dyslexia to write and spell with confidence. Nessy believes that if children have fun then learning becomes more memorable. Where children play games the increased level of engagement leads to dramatic improvements. Combine this philosophy with a structured, incremental system of learning and you can see the reason why academic results show such dramatic gains.

Contact us for results focused speech therapy

This article was written by our Speech Pathologist Ashleigh Fattah who is a Speech Pathology Australia member. If you have difficulties with dyslexia, make an appointment. We‘ll provide you with simple and effective therapy targeted to your concerns. Contact us today.

The post Resource Review – Nessy Learning Programme and Resources appeared first on ENT Wellbeing Sydney.

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