Services
Discovery Call
Each therapy journey starts with a discovery call with Brie (owner and speech pathologist). Together, we will discuss your speech pathology goals and concerns to make sure that I have the right skills and experience to support your child reach their goals.
Initial Consultation
The initial consultation is where I will collect and review case history information, your goals and priorities, and learn about your child’s communication skills. I use a combination of informal, and formal assessments as well as play based conversational samples to gain insight into your child’s communication strengths and challenges. Finding the right balance for each child between assessment tasks and relationship building activities is important, so that your child can feel comfortable in the therapy environment right from the start. Initial consultations typically take 1-2 sessions.
Following the initial consult, we will book a feedback (parent only) session via Telehealth and then provide you with a short written summary of findings. The feedback session will include discussing any assessment results and collaboratively setting therapy goals for your child’s communication journey. I will also discuss recommended treatment approaches and what therapy will look like for your child.
Therapy Sessions
Therapy sessions are inclusive of direct therapy with your child, continuous review of therapy goals and progress, and coaching around strategies/resources you can use at home to support your child’s communication goals. To provide holistic supports, I strive to liaise with other key stakeholders involved in your child’s care wherever possible and will check in with you regularly how our goals are generalising to daily life.
I believe that communication progress happens when children feel safe and are engaged, so I value and welcome your feedback throughout the journey as you know your child best!
Areas of Practice
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Speech refers to the way we say individual specific sounds. Speech sound difficulties may present as difficulties producing individual sounds or changing sounds in words which can impact overall intelligibility (ability to be understood by unfamiliar listeners without context). Confident Words Speech Therapy can support your child with articulation difficulties, phonological delays and disorders, and Childhood Apraxia of Speech.
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Oral language refers to both receptive (understanding) language and expressive (use) language. Language is how we understand information in our everyday environments and express our thoughts, opinions and ideas with others in spoken words and sentences.
Oral language therapy can include targeting specific skills such as vocabulary, following directions, sentence structure, grammar, or pragmatic functions of language (for example, asking and answering questions or sharing an opinion). It can also work on higher level language skills such as narrative language, problem solving, and inferencing. Confident Words Speech Therapy supports children who present as late takers, with language delays, and language disorders.
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Literacy skills can include reading, writing and spelling. Confident Words Speech Therapy can support with phonic knowledge, phonological awareness, reading decoding and fluency, reading comprehension, spelling, and expressing ideas and thoughts in written form. Strong oral language skills are crucial for developing successful literacy skills. When providing literacy intervention, I may look to gather information regarding your child’s oral language skills to ensure no foundations are missing.
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Stuttering occurs when there is a disruption in the flow of speech, often resulting in behaviours such as repetitions, blocking and prolongations of sounds, syllables or words. Early intervention for stuttering is vital for long term outcomes. I use a combination of evidence-based direct therapy (such as the Lidcombe Program) as well as tailored strategies to support your child’s communication in their daily environment. Confident Words Speech Therapy supports children between 3-8 years who present with stuttering.