Inclusive therapy
When a child or student from your site is receiving therapy through this practice, all efforts will be made to link with relevant staff from their care or educational setting. This ensures that not only goals for therapy can be incorporated in a curriculum or socially relevant way but that any concerns you have re the child’s communication, literacy or psychological needs are also addressed.
The nature of this contact is by individual arrangement but the most common forms are currently email and communication books. If therapy occurs on your site, then face to face contact is regular and easy. For children or students who attend the practice for therapy away from your setting, observation visits are often arranged and we make time (subject to parent approval) to attend relevant meetings e.g for One Plan meetings
Assessments
This practice specialises in the provision of thorough, accurate and educationally relevant assessments for both school and pre-school aged children. We use the latest and most up to date standardised assessment tools, consistent with the requirements of both state and independent school requirements.
We consider it important to go “beyond the test” and make sure that a range of information from all relevant sources is provided. A relevant report detailing the full range of your child’s educationally related communication needs is then compiled. In order to gain an accurate picture of the full range of educationally related communication needs before writing a relevant report.
All Staff working within this practice have the necessary police clearance for work in State, Independent and Catholic schools and pre-schools within South Australia. This practice has had nearly 2 decades of service provision in this specialised area.
Professional Development
This practice has a long history of providing professional development for childcare centres, parent groups, pre-schools and schools. This is a very important area of speech pathology practice as it enables sites to build their own capacity by empowering staff to work more effectively in the areas of speech, oral language and literacy. We also welcome enquiries from sites for presentations by one of our Psychologists
Packages or specific areas which can be offered to playgroup, childcare, pre-school or school sites include:
- Early speech and language development – what to look for
- Developing early language skills
- Questioning
- Classroom based language intervention or Junior Primary to High School
- Specific sessions about Speech and Dyspraxia
- Phonological Awareness Skills
- Oral Narrative development – bridging the gap between oracy and literacy
- Braidy the Story Braid – a practical oral narrative intervention program
- Newstalk – a classroom based morning news program
- Visual strategies workshops
- Custom written psychology focused workshops
No group is too big or small for these packages. Any of them can also be developed and tailored to meet site needs and can vary from 1 hour to a full day. School based workshops generally have a focus on looking at oral language as being an inclusive part of the school curriculum and goals from the current curriculum framework are incorporated.
Talk to us about tailoring a professional development program to your needs
Prevention Programs
There are a number of programs which can be implemented or “rolled out” in pre-schools or schools and they are not restricted to what is listed below. Sites may have a specific area of focus and any program can be tailored to meet such needs. The following are some of the more readily available programs which can be implemented.
- Early Literacy Foundations (ELF) – a program from the University of Queensland which involves a series of group sessions run by the speech pathologist but could then be administered by an appropriate member of school staff following their involvement in the first series of the program. This program has a junior primary focus – 5-8 years.
- Phonological Awareness Program for Literacy (PAL). This is the next step on from the ELF and targets those students in the 8-12 year old age range who are still struggling with phonological awareness and written literacy. It operates in a similar manner to the ELF.
- News Talk – A professional development package which can have a follow-up component at the class or whole school level.
- Narrative development programs– using Braidy the Story Braid or other relevant techniques. Suitable for both schools and pre-schools.
- SKILL Narrative program. Suitable for individuals or small groups
- AAC training including ProLoQuo2Go. Suitable for people working with persons with Disabilities who require additional support to communicate
- Voice workshops for teachers