Speech and Language Therapy and Assessments

A speech and language assessment can look at:

• listening and focus
• following instructions
• auditory processing
• receptive language (e.g. following instructions, understanding words and what people are saying, etc)
• expressive language (e.g. slow to start speaking, grammatical errors, limited spoken language, taking time to think of what they want to say, etc)
• social skills (e.g. conversational skills, interaction with peers, playing with peers, taking turns, etc)
• speech sounds (e.g. speech that is difficult to understand)
• stuttering/stammering (e.g. repetition of words, words feel stuck, etc)
• phonological awareness (e.g. difficulty with rhyming, sound awareness, literacy, etc)

Depending on your child’s age, therapists will use standardised assessments such as CELF5, RAPT, ACE 6-11 etc as well as informal assessments and observation.

On average, assessments take about 1 hour. However, some will be shorter, and some may be longer depending on the individual child. The length of the evaluation is influenced by the child’s age and how many different skills need to be evaluated. The assessment will be customised according to concerns expressed on a parent questionnaire that we request ahead of the assessment.