I am a Speech & Language Therapist based in the northeast of Ireland with over 17 years experience working with children and their families in supporting the child’ in achieving their speech, language and communication goals.
My approach to helping children who come under my care is a collaborative one. This allows for the child’s family to play a positive role in supporting the child’s path to achieving their agreed speech or language therapy goals. I provide a friendly and family centred and holistic approach that tailors each child’s program according to their specific needs.
Please note, I currently offer home visits only.
Areas I work on
Receptive Language skills refer to the ability to understand and follow spoken (or written) language. Receptive language skills involve understanding the words, phrases and language of others. To have successful receptive language skills, a child requires the following; attention and listening skills, auditory processing skills, the ability to understand words (i.e. simple vocabulary, phrases, longer narratives and stories); an understanding of concepts (e.g. hot/cold, big/small, under/over, happy/sad); an understanding of questions (‘what’s that?; where?; why?).
Expressive language skills refer to the child’s use of vocabulary (words) and how they use these words in sentences i.e. expressive Language is the spoken or written output of language. Components of expressive language that can be supported by a Speech & Language therapist include; vocabulary development (semantic skills)’ word formation (morphology); sentence formation (syntax/grammar) and narrative/ story-telling skills.
Speech sound delay/disorder: Speech sound difficulties refer to difficulties in the production of sounds that are used in the process of speaking. Speech errors are generally categorised as either articulation difficulties (i.e. the pronounciation of individual sounds in isolation or in word) or phonological errors (difficulty with patterns of errors e.g. leaving off the end of words (hat –> /ha/), or swapping/substituting one sound for another in words e.g. ‘cat’ –> /tat/ or ‘sun’ –> /dun/).
Dysfluency (Stammering/Stuttering): The term stuttering or stammering refers to a speech disorder in which sounds, syllables or words are repeated or prolonged, disrupting the natural flow of speech,. These interruptions may be accompanied by pauses, signs or struggle and/or tension such as eye blinking or facial grimace/twitching.
Phonological Awareness skills refer to the ability to identify and discriminate between different sounds and phonemes. Phonological awareness skills are critical for the foundation of a child’s literacy development. Phonological awareness skills that can be supported by Speech & Language therapy include; Rhyming, sentence segmentation, syllable segmentation, identification of onset (starting sound in a word) and rime (end of the word); phoneme blending and phoneme manipulation.