Coronavirus (COVID-19) update
Due to the ongoing coronavirus situation, and following current guidance from NHS England, the majority of our appointments will be via telephone and/or video calls. We are regularly reviewing the situation and working on how we can open up our services with the safety of our families and staff being our top priority.
If your child has an open referral to our speech and language therapy team and you need to speak to a speech and language therapist urgently, please email gst-tr.contactslt@nhs.net stating your child’s name, date of birth and postcode, and a speech and language therapist will contact you.
If you are worried about your child’s communication skills and your child is not known to our service, please email gst-tr.contactslt@nhs.net stating your child’s name, date of birth, registered GP and your telephone number. If your child is 0-5 years old, with a GP in Lambeth or Southwark, we can register you for a virtual drop-in appointment with a speech and language therapist.
Read our latest information on coronavirus.
Watch our specially created film about what to expect from a speech and language therapy session and why it's so important to attend.
[Text] What to expect from a community speech and language therapy session.
Sarah, mother of Patrick: So I'm the mum of Patrick. By the age of two I realised that there was actually quite a problem that we needed to address. Because he wasn't talking it's a very basic thing of not being able to communicate his needs. It's caused a lot of frustration for him, a lot of anger from him. It made things very difficult in the house for us. I struggled with how to deal with it until I had help from speech and language therapy.
Shantelle, speech and language therapist: Speech and language therapists can work to support children with speech, language and communication needs in a range of different ways. Sometimes we work with children in one-to-one sessions, we work in groups, we try to make them as fun and as exciting and motivating for that child. So we use play a lot in our therapy sessions because play is children's work. Children learn a lot through play where they are exploring, and it's a great opportunity to give them language to support their communication skills. We often start with the introduction of one activity followed by a different activity which is working on the same target word, so a different game. And then we may finish it with a story or a song just to enclose everything that we've been doing.
Nicola, speech and language therapist: Parents are invited, parents are given information about their child's level and then we work with them to help write our targets and goals.
Shantelle: And follow with maybe an activity which we then talk about how the parent can do that throughout the week with the child. Making sure that the parent or the adult that's working with the child knows what they're going to continue doing after our session is finished.
Rachel, teaching assistant: Well they enjoy the sessions in school so much because they're really fun and they're really hands on. The children can get involved, it's quite exciting for them to come out of class and get that one-to-one attention. And, we can see the improvements over time. We can see their speech developing.
Salina, mother of Eshan: Speech and language therapy has enabled my children to reach goals that I never thought that they would reach. I can see the progress, I can see it because I get reports so we can see the difference. They're the angels sent to me from heaven.
Sarah, mother of Patrick: Ever since starting the sessions I've seen a week on week improvement in Patrick. He's rapidly improved his speech. The skills that it gave to me as a parent have been invaluable.
Shantelle: It's really important that people come to their speech and language appointments because in the sessions we're showing them activities that they can carry out to support that child's communication skills.
Nicky, lead clinical specialist speech and language therapist: This means that we're able to make a lot of change by working really closely with parents, carers, nurseries and schools because communication is everybody's business and happens all day, every day.
We provide speech and language therapy services to children and young people across Lambeth and Southwark.
Our teams of speech and language therapists and assistants offer specialist advice, assessment and help for children and young people (0-19 years) who have difficulties with any aspect of their communication, including:
- understanding
- interacting with others
- attention and listening
- memory
- talking
- speech sounds and stammering.
We run advice sessions for parents, train staff to run groups and provide staff with advice to help them improve communication skills in children and young people.
We also work with babies, children and young people who have eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties.
You can find out more about what each of our teams does on the community speech and language therapy team page.
Who we work with?
As well as working with children, we also work with the people in their lives to make sure that they are supported in all areas where their communication skills can be improved. This may include parents, carers, other family members, school and nursery staff, social workers, staff in children’s centres and youth offending teams.
Should I be concerned?
Please download our document about when to be concerned about your child's speech and language development (PDF 102Kb).
What to do if you are concerned
If you would like further advice, you can see a speech and language therapist to discuss your child at one of our Chattertime sessions or come along to a monthly drop-in session. These sessions are free and open to all children under five in Lambeth and Southwark.
Find out more about our free sessions.
Training
We offer training courses to parents and any professionals working with children and young people in Lambeth and Southwark. For further details, please see our training page.