Speech & Language Therapists
Speech & Language Therapy
A Speech & Language Therapist is a qualified allied health professional who is trained to assess and diagnose communication impairment and works collaboratively with parents/carers and a range of professionals to support the child/young person.
Paediatric Speech & Language Therapists can assess a child’s communication levels and skills, both in terms of their understanding of communication directed toward them and how they communicate to others. They can then advise and help children and young people communicate to the best of their abilities when they have a communication need.
Communication needs can include speech difficulties, language difficulties, communication problems, voice problems and stammering. Some Speech & Language Therapists also work with children/young people who have eating and drinking difficulties.
At Doctor Kate the Speech & Language Therapist will focus their work on helping to understand your child's developmental profile and their assessments will contribute to the overall diagnoses that may be made. They will be able to assess if the reason for your child's difficulties are due to a speech and language difficulty, and if so they will be able to quantify this and provide advice as to how to support your child.
This assessment will use information from school and parents and where possible we will try to conduct this assessment within Doctor Kate. There are however some occasions where it is necessary to assess a child within the school environment to conduct a full and comprehensive assessment. We will not be able to see children in school who are further than 1 hour from Bath and we will need to charge for travel time. We will of course need consent from you and school to do school based assessments.
Speech & Language Therapists are one of the key professionals involved in social communication assessments (Autism Assessments). Within Doctor Kate, if your child needs a full Autism diagnostic assessment, part of this will be a joint paediatrician and Speech and Language appointment.
Zoe Macklin Day is a qualified Speech & Language Therapist and has been working as a Paediatric Speech & Language Therapist in the National Health Service for the last 25 years. She is currently working within the Wiltshire Children’s Community Service.
Zoe has a significant amount of experience assessing and working with children with a range of communication needs and her specialist areas are pre-school complex needs and autism spectrum disorder.
Zoe has worked in a number of different settings as a Speech & Language Therapist, including community clinics, language units in mainstream school and a district specialist centre.