Speech Therapy

Speech therapy addresses problems in verbal and non-verbal communication.

The speech therapist is involved in the prevention, diagnosis and therapy of verbal and non-verbal difficulties in order for the child to integrate smoothly in the school and greater social environments.

A child is in need of speech therapies when exhibiting at least one of the following:

• Expressive deficiency (dyslalia) and speech comprehension: when the child has difficulty in sentence making, description of events, verbal expression of thoughts and feelings, starting or keeping up conversations, executing simple or complex orders.
• Articulation disorders: difficulties producing sounds in syllables or saying words incorrectly to the point that other people can’t understand what’s being said.
• Fluency disorders: problems such as stuttering, the condition in which the flow of speech is interrupted by abnormal stoppages, repetitions, or prolonging sounds and syllables when faced with difficulty in starting a sentence or due to a “tic”.
• Communication deficiencies due to hearing problems: (deafness, hearing loss).
• Verbal or non-verbal communication deficiency: in children suffering from pervasive developmental disorders—autism spectrum, cerebral palsy, syndromes, or any congenital fissure.
• Feeding-swallowing difficulties (dysphagia)