Services
Paediatric Speech Therapy
Are you looking for one of the best Paediatric Speech Therapy Sydney area? At ANJ, our team of Speech Pathologists are kind, caring and enthusiastic about working with clients to help them achieve their true potential. All of our Speech Pathologists are passionate about working closely with families to provide individualised care based on client’s needs and are able to provide services in the clinic, at home or in preschool/ school settings. Our services include assessments, individual therapy sessions, preparation of resources, as well as guidance to clients, their caregivers and other team members engaged in therapy services. We specialise in providing therapy for children with Autism, speech and language delays, developmental delays, and school readiness impairment. You can contact ANJ Therapy for Paediatric Speech Therapy Sydney area.
Speech Pathologists can help with the following issues:
Speech Language Disorders (SLD):
It’s also referred to as oral language disorder, which shows a striking impairment in language acquisition and usage across many modalities as a result of deficiencies in expression and/or comprehension across any of the language domains. It usually is accompanied by other conditions such as intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, developmental disabilities, hearing impairment, other mental or motor disorders, etc. Each of these present unique characteristics along with similar language deficits.
If SLD is the only deficit and is not present with any other underlying intellectual disabilities, developmental disabilities, any sensory impairment, other motor or mental conditions it is called as Specific Language Impairment.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD):
Individuals with ASD present with deficits in their communicative abilities and their social functioning. ASD can range from mild to severe, indicating the effect of these difficulties on their daily living. An individual with ASD may have communication deficits such as difficulties in comprehending, speaking, reading and writing skills. They may have difficulties in understanding and using words or gestures, following commands, maintaining conversations, reading without understanding (called Hyperlexia), etc. Individuals with ASD have social deficits where they are unable to build relationships, unable to join in play activities or group activities, do not understand others’ feelings, etc.
Individuals with ASD may have repetitive behaviours such as crying or laughing without any reason, repetitive hand or body movements, having difficulty with change, showing interest only on a few food items or objects or topics, etc. These signs and symptoms can be present in very young children and they may change as they get older.
Speech Sound Disorders (SSD):
Speech Sound Disorder (SSD) is an umbrella term which represents deficits in the perception, motor production or phonological representation of speech sounds. SSD can be either organic or functional type.
SSD’s of the organic type occur as a result of a neurological (example: dysarthria and childhood apraxia of speech), structural (example: cleft lip and palate), or perceptual (example: hearing impairment) cause. The functional type have no known cause; these include issues related to either motor aspects or linguistic aspects of speech production, previously known as articulation or phonological disorders respectively. Articulation errors include errors in the production of individual speech sounds (example: omissions and substitutions). Phonological errors include predictable and rule-based errors which affects more than one sound (example: fronting, stopping, etc). It’s often challenging to clearly differentiate between articulation and phonological disorders, hence a broader term “speech sound disorder” is used.
Fluency Disorders:
A disruption in the rate, rhythm and presence of disfluencies of speech (such as repetitions of sounds, syllables, words, and phrases; sound prolongations; and blocks) constitutes a fluency disorder. It may also be accompanied by excessive tension, speaking avoidance, struggle behaviors, and secondary behaviors.
Stuttering is the most common type of fluency disorder which refers to an interruption in the flow of speech that characterizes types of dysfluencies such as repetition, prolongation and blocks. These dysfluencies can be accompanied by avoidance behaviors, escape behaviors, physical tension, etc.
Another fluency disorder called cluttering is characterised by a speech rate that is perceived to be rapid and/or irregular, atypical pauses, maze behaviors, pragmatic issues, a lack of awareness of fluency issues or moments of dysfluency, excessive disfluencies, collapsing or omitting syllables, and problems with language formulation that lead to breakdowns in speech clarity and/or fluency. Individuals can have stuttering, cluttering or both occurring together.
Reading and Writing Disorders:
They include of reading, writing, and spelling disorders. Despite the fact that these disorders are stated separately, people can have combined impairments in multiple areas. For instance, reading comprehension problems frequently co-occur with word recognition problems because readers must not only recognise words but also draw conclusions about underlying circumstances in the text. Reading and writing performance can be impacted by spelling difficulties and problems expressing concepts in writing; difficulty or improvement in either word reading or spelling can have an impact on performance in the other domain. Similar to this, a person may struggle both with the writing process and with producing the written product. One or more language domains can be impacted by difficulties in spelling, reading, and writing. Areas to consider in assessing and treating written language disorders includes word recognition deficits (Dyslexia), reading comprehension deficits (Hyperlexia), writing process deficits, writing product deficits (Dysgraphia) and spelling deficits.
Social Communication Disorder (SCD):
The hallmark of social communication disorder (SCD) is a chronic inability to use verbal and nonverbal communications in social contexts.
The main deficiencies may be in language processing, pragmatics, social interaction, social understanding, or any combination of the aforementioned. Sociocultural and personal factors affect social communication behaviours such eye contact, facial expressions, and body language.
SCD can lead to a variety of issues, such as challenges interacting socially, establishing peer or romantic or other types of relationships, succeeding in academics, and excelling at work.
Voice Disorders:
When a person’s voice quality, pitch, and loudness are inconsistent with their age, gender, culture, or geographic area, they are said to have a voice disorder. Even if others do not find it odd or out of the ordinary, a vocal disorder is evident when a person shows discomfort about having an unnatural voice that does not meet everyday requirements. Voice disorders can be categorised into organic voice disorders and functional voice disorders. Organic voice disorders these disorders are brought on by changes in the processes of the respiratory, laryngeal, or vocal tract; they include structural voice disorders (example: edema, vocal nodules, etc.) and neurogenic voice disorders (example: vocal fold paralysis, vocal tremor, etc). Functional voice disorders, occur when the physical structure is normal, and the vocal mechanism being used inefficiently, such as vocal fatigue, muscle tension dysphonia or aphonia, etc.