Assisting Wollondilly Children Through Paediatric Speech Pathology
Understanding How We Help
At South West Kids Clinic, we specialise in providing high-quality paediatric speech therapy for children aged 0-18, supporting a wide range of communication and language challenges.
Conveniently located on the corner of Margaret & Colden Street in Picton, our dedicated team works closely with families in Wollondilly to develop personalised therapy plans that meet each child’s unique needs and goals.
Our mission is to help children overcome communication barriers, build confidence, and reach their fullest potential through evidence-based therapy techniques.
If you’re looking for professional and compassionate speech therapy in the Wollondilly area, give us a call on (02) 9602 3377 or via our online contact form today to discover how we can empower your child to communicate with confidence and thrive.
How Our Speech Pathologists Can Help Your Child
South West Kids Clinic provides a comprehensive range of speech pathology services for children. Our goal is to address communication, speech sound, and feeding challenges through innovative and effective therapies. We work closely with families, as well as the child’s therapy and medical team, to ensure strategies are practical and empower families to take an active role in their child’s progress.
Here’s how we can help:
Accelerate Understanding and Use of Language
We implement strategies and techniques that boost language acquisition, helping children understand and use age-appropriate language effectively in their daily lives. Our team thoroughly assesses children’s underlying language skills and foundational areas of learning to determine strengths and difficulties tailored to each child. This allows our team to set goals that reflect the family and child’s needs.
Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)
Our Speech Pathologists use the latest evidence to assess, trial, and implement Assistive Technology to enhance a child’s independent communication. We explore various AAC options and collaborate with equipment providers to find the best support, ensuring effective home, school, and community communication. Additionally, we work with families, educators, and others to support and train them in using AAC, ensuring these tools are seamlessly integrated into the child’s life.
Speech Sound Development
Our therapists are well-versed in typical speech sound development and identifying and treating complex speech disorders by following the latest evidence and using the most effective treatment methods. Our therapies are aimed at helping children learn and correctly articulate age-appropriate speech sounds and providing tailored programs to establish optimal clarity of speech so children can be more independently understood in all aspects of their lives.
Individualised Goals
At South West Kids Clinic, each child’s therapy plan is customised in collaboration with the family to create personalised therapy goals that cater to their unique needs and potential for growth. Our team also works alongside a child’s family, therapy team, educators, and medical professionals as part of their intervention to ensure that a child’s needs are understood holistically and to support the best therapeutic outcomes for each child.
Stuttering and Fluency Intervention
Our team understands that fluency disorders can impact a child’s whole life. We work with the most suitable techniques for each child to confidently use their voice. We provide individualised treatment approaches to manage and treat stuttering, focusing on improving fluency and boosting the child’s confidence in speaking.
Dysphagia Intervention
Our Feeding Speech Pathologists work with children with Paediatric Dysphagia to learn vital eating and drinking skills so that they can participate with the most independence possible to eat with their friends and family while maintaining safety. Speech Pathologists at South West Kids Clinic work on this in the following ways:
- Our Speech Pathologists work closely with a child’s medical team to ensure that crucial referrals are made or that further investigations, such as Videofluoroscopic Swallow Studies or nasendoscopy, are conducted to explore airway safety.
- Oral Motor Examination: At a child’s first appointment or assessment, our Speech Pathologists examine oral motor skills and difficulties to identify causes of difficulty eating, drinking, and swallowing. Once our team understands oral motor skills, it tailors therapy to build strength, reduce risks, and support independent skills during meals and snacks.
- Optimising Mealtimes: We tailor food textures and types to suit each child’s developmental stage and swallowing capabilities, ensuring that mealtimes support their overall health and therapy goals. Our team also works with families to ensure foods work within their typical diet and schedule and to promote family participation during meals.
- Prescribing Equipment and Foods: We prescribe adaptive equipment and special foods where necessary to facilitate safer and more effective eating practices. This can include thickened liquids, special cutlery to support self-feeding, or cups that allow safe water drinking. Our team works alongside other therapy disciplines (Occupational Therapy or Dietetics) to ensure that strategies work with the child’s underlying skills or nutritional needs.
- Create Positive Mealtime Experiences: Our Speech Pathologists work to create enjoyable and stress-free mealtime routines, assisting families in managing and improving the dining experience and focusing on fun and connection during mealtimes. Our therapists support families in following Responsive Feeding Practices to enable children’s curiosity and interest in foods and mealtimes and take the stress out of the family’s routine.
Our Children’s Speech Pathology Treatment Techniques
We implement evidence-based and innovative therapies to address a wide range of speech and language challenges. Our techniques are designed to meet the unique needs of each child, ensuring therapy is both effective and engaging.
Our advanced approaches include:
HANEN
The HANEN program focuses on coaching parents to be their child’s most crucial language teachers and facilitating parents’ ability to identify and respond to different forms of communication. The strategies and resources within this program teach parents how to boost their child’s language skills in their family’s existing daily activities, focusing on fun and child-led interaction.
Learn To Play/Play-based Therapy
This approach harnesses the power of play to support language development, social skills, and play development. Play-based therapy provides a natural, fun environment for children to learn communication skills while engaging in meaningful play activities. Our team understands the importance of play and the neuroscience behind making therapy play-based and joyful – plus, children love it!
Augmentative and Alternative Communication AAC
We assess, trial and implement augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems personalised to the child and their skills to allow them to communicate to the best of their ability. We also educate and support families, educators, and others on the child’s team to implement their AAC system in all the child’s environments and daily activities. Our Speech Pathologists work closely with equipment providers and technical specialists to trial and implement AAC systems to suit various physical and neurological needs – such as eye gaze devices or alternative access systems.
Switch Access Methods
This particular type of AAC allows children with significant physical difficulties to communicate by activating buttons with a body part they can comfortably control. The switches may be connected to other communication devices, toys, or household appliances, allowing the child to communicate, play, and be more independent in their environment. Our team works closely with a child’s therapy team to ensure that systems are customised to each child’s skills and personal communication goals.
DTTC - Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing
This method is used for children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech and helps them plan the mouth movements required for speech. In conjunction with individualised cueing, specific words are selected for practice to target the speech movement patterns that the child has difficulty producing.
ReST - Rapid Syllable Transition Treatment
ReST is a treatment for children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech and some children with dysarthria or significant phonological disorders. It teaches children to coordinate new speech movements in words and involves practising them rapidly to achieve more accurate speech. Our Speech Pathologists tailor each ReST program to each child to ensure success and progress.
Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness describes a child’s ability to identify and understand speech sounds as part of typical development. Our Speech Pathologists can assess and determine the presence of atypical or delayed phonological development and treat difficulties using a wide range of techniques in therapy before problems begin to impact social interaction or literacy at schools. Our techniques range from sound awareness to discrimination to blending and manipulating sounds to strengthen a child’s phonological system and later literacy skills.
PROMPT
PROMPT (PROMPTS for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets) therapy involves physical manipulation of the child’s jaw, lips, and tongue to teach the correct movements for speech sounds. This treatment is typically used to assist children with motor speech disorders in learning to express words of importance clearly to the child and their family.
Lidcombe Program
The Lidcombe Program is a behavioural treatment for young children who stutter. It involves parents providing feedback on speech fluency in a supportive, positive way to reduce stuttering. Our therapists train families to implement the program at home while engaged in a structured therapy plan until stutter-free speech is achieved.
Fluency Intervention
In addition to the Lidcombe program, our therapists use various techniques to facilitate stutter-free speech or ideal fluency for each child. Our techniques also involve working closely with psychologists, as we know the impact that stuttering can have on children and their families. Our team assesses the child’s stutter, their attitudes towards stuttering, and its overall effect on a child’s life to tailor programs to achieve the smoothest speech possible and get children to use their voices with confidence.
Responsive Feeding Practices (RFP)
Mealtimes with a child with dysphagia or restricted eating can be significantly stressful for the child and family. Our therapists follow RFP to support families in building positive mealtime habits, fostering children’s interest in foods, and reducing family stress around mealtimes.
Developmental Food Continuum
Our Speech Pathologists understand that food refusal or restrictive eating can be due to more than just behaviour. We assess a child’s oral motor skills and overall development to determine the safest foods to support biting, chewing, and swallowing. We also identify foods to develop strength and coordination when eating. This approach supports children in progressing through various textures and types of solid foods, adapting as their feeding skills and preferences evolve.
STEPS+ Program
STEPS+ (Supportive Treatment of Eating in PreschoolerS) is a structured approach to feeding intervention that includes trauma-informed practices when working with children who have dysphagia alongside food-refusal or avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID). The STEPS+ approach supports parents in decreasing stress, creating routine, building enjoyment during meals and developing oral motor skills in children.
Pacing Methods
We coach families on how to use paced feeding for infants who bottle feed. This helps manage the milk flow and the infant’s intake, ensuring they can feed safely and comfortably. This can be done through positioning, teat flow trialling, or formula thickening to ensure that infants can safely and comfortably feed and meet their nutritional needs. Our Speech Pathologists work closely with a child’s medical and therapeutic team to ensure that all underlying medical or postural needs are understood and supported.
Division of Responsibility Method
In our feeding intervention, we strive to make mealtimes less stressful so families can enjoy this crucial part of the day together while developing age-expected skills. This method acknowledges the roles of children and caregivers during mealtimes, with caregivers deciding what and when to offer food and children being encouraged to listen to their hunger and fullness cues.
