Speech Sound Clinic
At The Happy Space Allied Health, we have an Allied Health Assistant (AHA) Speech Sound Clinic. AHAs are speech pathology students who are closely supervised by speech pathologists to provide high quality, evidence based, accessible and affordable therapy for children who require support for their articulation or pronunciation, for example if they have a lisp (replace the “s” sound with “th”) or other speech sound errors.
Initial Session
In the first session, the AHA will complete a range of screeners to establish in which areas your child requires support. After the face-to-face portion of the session, they will analyse the screeners and come up with a treatment plan to support your child, with support from the supervising speech pathologist. Although AHAs will not target language or literacy directly in their 1:1 sessions, they will complete a language and literacy screener in the initial sessions to assess whether your child requires extra support to develop their skills in these areas, so they can refer on to groups where required.
Subsequent Sessions
In subsequent sessions, the AHA will use evidence based and systematic methods to teach your child to use their new sound. Your AHA will explain to you how and why we use the methods we use, and it is important to follow the program closely for best results. The session will comprise of speech drills (saying sounds, words or sentences) alongside games. This will be showing you how you can practice your child’s sounds at home. Home practice will also be assigned. Home practice is the MOST important part of speech sound therapy – the more often we practice the faster we will make progress.
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What is the cost? NDIS funding (1 hour): $86.79 | Private (45 minutes): $85
