There are a number of different areas that Speech Pathologists treat. Sometimes it can be confusing for parents as they are not sure what part of communication their child is having difficulty with. Please read below for an explanation of the main areas children have trouble with.

Speech

Some children have speech which has sound mistakes (eg. "tat" for cat, "bow" for boat). These sound mistakes can make their overall speech very difficult to understand. This is called a Phonological Delay and ranges in severity. A small portion of children can have a severe form of a disordered speech sound system called Dyspraxia. This involves the child having difficulty planning the motor sequences required to make sounds and as a result their speech is often very hard to understand with many unusual sound substitution errors.

Language

Receptive Language difficulties
Some children have difficulties understanding spoken and written information. They find it difficult to follow directions and answer questions. Therapy tends to focus on improving their comprehension skills and knowledge of concepts (eg. colour, shape, size, describing words, location words and following directions).

Expressive Language difficulties
Some children have difficulty getting their message across (either verbally or in a written format). These children usually know what they want to say however have trouble organising the thoughts and words they need to make a meaningful sentence.

• Therapy is available for younger children whose language is slow to develop("late talkers" aged
  18 months +). This therapy focuses on developing joint attention skills, prompting communication attempts, establishing core vocabulary and comprehension skills.
• Therapy is available for slightly older children (aged 3+) who are having some difficulty growing their vocabulary, having difficulty understanding language or having difficulty with grammar.

Literacy

Some children have difficulty remembering letters and sounds and putting them together to form words or read words (literacy delay). Therapy focuses on strengthening the child's knowledge of letter-sound awareness, writing letter shapes, understanding word families, word attack skills, spelling, reading and writing.