Speech, language and communication are core life skills. Children and young people need communication skills so they can fulfil their potential in life.
Tees Valley children and young people’s speech and language therapy (SALT) aims to ensure that every child and young person across the Teesside area is offered the help and support they need to achieve this.
Although speech, language and communication skills can cause difficulties for any child, they are common in children who have other diagnoses such as autism, learning disabilities or cerebral palsy.
By improving communication skills, we also see improvements in children and young people’s social skills, friendships, self-confidence and literacy skills.
Our team
We support children and young people from birth to 18 years – or up to 25 where a young person has an education health and care plan in place.
As speech and language therapists, we work with children and young people who have difficulties with communication or with eating, drinking and swallowing.
We work in close partnership with lots of other health and educational professionals such as teachers and nursery staff, health visitors, consultant paediatricians, dieticians and audiologists.
Children and young people are seen across a variety of settings such as nurseries, schools, clinics, hospitals and in their own homes.
Communication needs
Speech, language and communication needs can describe difficulties across one or more aspects of communication including:
- Making the speech sounds accurately so that talking can be understood by other people
- Putting words and sentences together, for example to ask for something, tell a story or hold a conversation
- Understanding or making sense of what other people say
- Interacting with others, for example understanding and using body language and eye contact, using language in different social situations, understanding non-verbal rules of good communication
- Avoiding talking or being reluctant to talk in some or all situations
- Stammering (also known as stuttering, fluency or bumpy talking): Repeating, stretching or avoiding words or sounds, sometimes with a noticeable physical effort to talk
- Healthy voice production, including sounding weak, strained breathy or hoarse when talking
How we support your child
Our friendly and highly skilled team of speech and language therapists and assistant practitioners provide support in a variety of settings. We tailor support from our service around each individual and their needs.
We aim to help a child or young person develop their best possible communication skills, taking into account their individual abilities and needs.
Working together with the most important people in a child’s life we jointly plan an individual package of support to help them move on. When supporting your child we will consider:
- How to reduce the impact of speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) on a child or young person’s wider life
- If the time is right for a child or young person to progress with support
- The views of the people around a child or young person, including family members and other professionals
- What current research and evidence tells us that can help with specific SLCNs
We help the people around a child or young person put the most effective support in place, where and when it is most needed.