The Speech and Language Therapy Service is broadly divided into the following areas:

• Early Years Team focussing on prevention and early intervention
• Community Clinic Team focussing on helping children with speech sound, fluency or voice difficulties
• School Team working with children in mainstream primary and secondary schools and supporting school staff to help the children
• Additional Needs Team working with children with more complex needs within  the community and Specialist Support Schools
• Traded Team delivering intervention to mainstream schools via a funded service level agreement

Speech and Language Therapists work with children who may need help:

• Understanding what is being said to them
• Listening and following instructions
• Using words
• Joining words together in sentences
• Saying sounds and speaking clearly
• Eating and drinking
• Communicating and interacting with other children
• Understanding their environment

The Speech and Language Therapist will assess the child’s speech, language and communication and decide the best way to develop the child’s language skills. This may be advice, direct individual intervention or group intervention alongside support for the parent/carer to carry out activities at home/school.

The Speech and Language Therapist will work together with other people including nursery staff and teachers who have regular contact with the child to help them understand the child’s needs and provide strategies to encourage a good level of communication.

The Speech and Language Therapy Team work in a range of locations including home, health centres, schools and early years settings

The service is broadly divided into the following areas:

• Early Years Team: focussing on prevention and early intervention
• Community Clinic Team: which focuses on helping children with speech sound, fluency or voice difficulties
• School Team: working with children in mainstream primary and secondary schools and supporting school staff to help the children
• Additional Needs Team: working with children with more complex needs within  the community and Specialist Support Schools
• Traded Team: delivering intervention to mainstream schools via a funded service level agreement

We work in a range of locations including homes, health centres, schools and early years settings.

Children being referred MUST be registered with a GP in the Manchester area or attend a Manchester school.

The Speech and Language Therapy service accepts referrals direct from parents/carers via a phone call.

Any professional from health, education, social services or private/voluntary setting who have a concern about a child’s speech, language and communication can make a referral by completing the Children’s Community Referral Form or appropriate team referral form (school language and communication referral form or school speech sounds referral form) and emailing it to cmm-tr.SLT.Admin@nhs.net

If the child attends a Manchester school, the school will be asked to support the referral by completing a school referral form.

The professional must have the consent of the child’s parents.

Email and postal referrals must be on a children and young people’s service referral form – download here.

Additional/Supporting Information for Referrals

Any relevant useful additional information can be sent with the referral, for example:

WellComm Screen Score Sheet

SLCN pupil checklist

Contact information

Advice Leaflets

Please follow the link to access our advice leaflets for support with different areas of speech, language and communication.

• Speech and Language Therapy Advice Leaflets (Padlet)

Resources & Signposting

• Speech and Language Therapy Resources & Signposting (Padlet)

Feedback

Please let us know what you think of our resources by completing this short Survey Monkey. We’re always looking to make improvements, so if you have any suggestions, we’d love to hear about them from you.

• Speech & Language Therapy Feedback (Surveymonkey)

Useful links

• BBC Tiny Happy People: www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people Ideas and activities to help you develop your child’s communication skills through simple interaction and play.
• Afasic: www.afasic.org.uk Raises awareness of speech, language and communication needs(SLCN) and  campaigns for better services and provision for children and young people with SLCN
• ICAN: www.ican.org.uk works to support the development of speech ,language and communication skills in children needing extra support
• The Literacy Trust:  www.literacytrust.org.uk An independent charity that transforms lives through language and literacy
• Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists: www.rcslt.org The professional body for Speech and Language Therapists
• Manchester Local Offer (Disability & Special Needs): manchestergov/SEND   The Manchester Local Offer brings together information in one place. It helps children and young people with SEND up to the age of 25 and their parents understand what services and support they can expect locally. This includes their statutory entitlements which are required by law.

Speech and Language Therapy Online Workshops 

This section provides information on our Speech and Language Therapy online workshops. These have been created to help parents and carers across Manchester learn how to support their child’s social communication needs.

There are three workshops in total to complete and the goals of these are to:

• Provide you with new strategies to support your child’s early interaction and communication skills.
• Provide you with new information so you know why we are asking you to try the strategies.
• Providing you with ideas on how to implement the strategies in your child’s daily life in order to help their communication skills.

It is recommended to watch one workshop per month and then follow the advice at home.

To view a workshop, please select from the page links below.

Workshop 1 – Getting the Interaction Started

Workshop 2 – Supporting Understanding 

Workshop 3 – Creating Communication Opportunities

Social Communication and Interaction Skills Toolkit

We are currently in the process of creating a social communication and interaction skills toolkit to also use at home. When this is available, we will share this to webpage.

Feedback

Please let us know what you think of our online workshops by completing this short Survey Monkey. We’re always looking to make improvements, so if you have any suggestions, we’d love to hear about them from you.

The MLCO Children and Young People’s Speech and Language Therapy Service have put together a series of videos intended to help parents and carers support young people (aged 11-18) with communication needs.

You can view the full series, here: www.manchesterlco.org/salt-parent-carer-11-18/