Speech and Language Therapy is the process of enabling people to communicate to the best of their ability. This also covers eating and swallowing difficulties.
The focus of this department is on:

• COMMUNICATION – The Speech and Language Therapists at High Hopes, work towards improving a child’s ability to communicate through verbal and/or non-verbal language using a holistic approach.
• ORAL MOTOR AND FEEDING – The speech and language therapy team is also qualified to assess and offer feeding and oral motor therapy in order to support a child’s daily life activities. Oral motor and feeding therapy are co-related areas that involve direct intervention to promote muscle condition and function, related to breathing, sucking, swallowing, chewing and speaking.
• DYSPHAGIA – The team is also capable of handling super special kids who have varying degrees of difficulty in swallowing, pain while swallowing and aspiration.
• AAC – AUGMENTATIVE AND ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION: AAC involves using tools and techniques to create a communication system for children who are not yet using speech consistently. AAC is an interdisciplinary field that involves working with physiotherapy for positioning, occupation therapy for fine motor coordination, and vision therapy for understanding what a child can actually see.

The Speech and Language Therapy Department believes that communication and feeding,
apart from being essential functions of life, are also bonding opportunities for parents and children. They focus on understanding children with complex speech, language and feeding needs and focus on providing parents with the education and tools required to carry over therapy success into the home environment.