Bedfordshire and Luton Children's Speech and Language Therapy Service

Welcome to our service

Our speech and language team aim to provide advice, help and support for children and young people aged 0 to 19 years old who have difficulties with speech, language, communication and swallowing.

• How we work

  We offer a mixture of face-to-face, telephone and virtual appointments. These will be matched with the needs of each child and family.

  We have three speech and language teams who specialise with different groups of children:

  Community speech and language team. We help children of all ages. We assess and help children with disordered speech and language development. This includes children with a stammer or nonfluent speech, voice disorders, difficulties understanding and using language, and disordered speech development.

  Early communication support team. We help preschool children. We help parent and carer speech and language groups, provide early advice sessions and home visits to help with children's early communication skills. 

  Special needs team. We help early years children with complex needs, children with speech, language and communication needs and children with eating or swallowing difficulties. We work with families and professionals. We will agree Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) goals.

  ---

  Once your child has had an assessment, you may be offered a package of support. This is a plan that is tailor made to your child. It will focus on ways to help your child and ways to encourage them to reach their targets. A package of support may include:

  • Information and guidance on communication tools such as visual supports.
  • Suggest strategies and methods to help your child’s everyday communication.
  • Sessions to show strategies and techniques.
  • Training workshops to learn strategies and techniques for parents and professionals.
  • A review with a speech and language therapist or support practitioner. This is to check that you understand the plan and strategies. It is also to check that they are becoming a part of your child's daily life.

  Please be aware that your child’s package of support may not contain all these suggestions. A package of support is to help with the challenges that your child is experiencing at that time.

  A package of support is completed when the Speech and Language therapist is happy that your child has the support they need to meet their targets. Completing a package of support does not mean that there is no longer a speech, language or communication need. 

  If there are changes or new concerns that require support. Your child may need another package of support. You can make a request by contacting our service. 

• Who you will see and speak to

  • Speech and language therapist are specialists who assess speech, language and communication skills. They investigate any possible reasons for difficulties and provide advice on programmes and strategies to help children with speech, language and communication skills. 
  • Speech and language therapy support practitioners work under the direction of a speech and language therapist. They provide speech and language therapy to individuals and small groups, deliver training, make resources and much more. 
  • Administrators are very skilled NHS professionals that provide all the organisational support for the clinical teams. They are also the friendly voices at the other end of the phone when contacting the service.

• Where we work

  We work in the community across Bedfordshire and Luton. As our team are integrated in the local community and schools they will be in lots of locations in the local areas offering support.