Child Speech Therapist Sydney
If you have concerns that your child may have a speech or language disorder, then the best thing that you can do is take your child in for an assessment with a professional.
The child speech therapist will use a number of different assessment methods in order to determine if your child has a speech disorder and what type of disorder they actually have. This assessment will be required in order to determine what path of therapy will be needed so that your child can communicate properly in the future.
What types of assessments will the child speech therapist use? This will depend on the professional, their experience, and their method of work, but some of the standard assessments include the following:
“The Clinically Useful Words Test” was created in order to determine how a child can handle certain long words. These words use a number of different letters, syllables, and sound combinations in order to find any delays or frustrations in the child’s ability to pronounce them.
Another assessment is the “Locke Task”. This test was created by a doctor in the 1980s as a method of diagnosing speech disorders. Essentially, this test will be to see if the child can actually hear problems in pronunciation and speech. The child will need to listen to different words pronounced correctly and incorrectly. One common problem in speech disorders would be an inability to determine the problems in word diction and pronunciation.
The “Speech Characteristics Rating Form” is a method of standardizing speech and language pathology testing. This form will allow a child speech therapist to evaluate the child on a number of different speech and language levels to pinpoint any specific issues for further use.
Finally, there is a series of assessments called “Quick Screeners”. These screeners are used as a preliminary evaluation to get a grasp on whether or not the child has any speech problem at all. Quick screener methods are not that in-depth and will almost always be used just in the very beginning before moving on to a more in-depth assessment for a detailed evaluation.
When you take your child to a child speech therapist in Sydney, there may be a number of different assessments they will use in order to determine if there is a language disorder. There are many different assessments that could be used, including those described above. This way, the child speech therapist can accurately determine any speech or language disorders that your child may have.