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Speech Therapy
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Therapy & support
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Therapy & support
How can I support my child's communication development from birth?
Babies' communication grows from birth through warm, responsive interaction — talking, singing, eye contact and back-and-forth turn-taking long before words appear. Narrate your day, get face-to-face, read and sing, and respond to your baby's sounds and cries. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow can I support speech and language therapy goals at home?
Support speech and language therapy goals at home by weaving the therapist's specific targets into everyday routines — narrating your day, following your child's lead, pausing to give them time, expanding their words and reading together — kept short, playful and low-pressure. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow can I support PECS goals at home?
PECS goals are supported at home by keeping picture cards available everywhere, creating motivating reasons to communicate, and honouring every exchange instantly by giving the child exactly what the picture shows. Following the child's lead and staying in step with the therapist's phase keeps progress steady. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow can speech and language therapy help a child with Autism Spectrum?
Speech and language therapy helps an autistic child build functional communication — making requests, understanding others and sharing social moments — using play, pictures, sign or speech-generating tools (AAC) as well as spoken words. It is autism-affirming, follows the child's lead and coaches parents too. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow Speech & Language Therapy Helps a Child with Cerebral Palsy
Speech and language therapy helps a child with cerebral palsy by building clearer communication (through speech or assistive tools like AAC), strengthening the oral-motor control behind talking, and supporting safe, comfortable feeding and swallowing — always shaped around the child's own strengths and delivered alongside physiotherapy and the medical team. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow speech and language therapy helps a child with Childhood Apraxia of Speech
Childhood Apraxia of Speech is a motor-planning difficulty, and speech and language therapy is its primary, evidence-based support — using frequent, repetitive, motor-based practice with multisensory cues to help the brain plan and sequence speech movements reliably. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow speech and language therapy helps a child with Developmental Language Disorder
Speech and language therapy is the core, evidence-based support for Developmental Language Disorder, building a child's understanding, vocabulary, grammar and sentence-building through play and everyday talk while coaching parents to create language-rich routines. With early, consistent help most children make meaningful gains. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow can speech and language therapy help a child with Down syndrome?
Speech and language therapy helps a child with Down syndrome build understanding, communication and clearer speech by strengthening comprehension first, using gestures, signs and picture tools alongside speech, gently developing the mouth muscles, growing vocabulary, and working with hearing care. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerSpeech & Language Therapy for Global Developmental Delay
For a child with Global Developmental Delay, speech and language therapy builds the foundations of communication — understanding, gestures, sounds, words and connection — and supports linked skills like play, attention and feeding, working alongside the wider care team. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow speech and language therapy helps a child with hearing impairment
Speech and language therapy helps a child with hearing impairment learn to listen, understand and communicate — building auditory skills, spoken language, clear speech and where needed sign, working alongside hearing aids or cochlear implants and the audiology team. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow can speech and language therapy help a non-verbal or minimally verbal child?
Speech and language therapy helps a non-verbal or minimally verbal child by building communication through every available means — gestures, pictures, signs or speech devices (AAC) — while strengthening the foundations of speech such as joint attention, imitation and understanding. Evidence shows AAC supports, not replaces, spoken language. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow speech and language therapy helps a child with selective mutism
Speech and language therapy helps a child with selective mutism by gently lowering the anxiety that blocks speech, using a graded, confidence-led approach — from non-verbal communication to whispers to full speech — and techniques like sliding-in, all delivered in real settings such as the classroom with parents and teachers as partners. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow speech and language therapy helps with social communication difficulties
Speech and language therapy supports children with social communication difficulties by teaching the practical rules of connecting — conversation turn-taking, reading facial expressions and tone, adapting language to different people, and understanding meaning in context — through play, role-play and real social situations, with parent coaching for everyday practice. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow speech and language therapy helps a child with speech and language delay
Speech and language therapy helps a child with speech and language delay by building understanding and expression through play-based, tailored practice, addressing the specific cause of the delay and coaching parents for everyday talk. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow PECS Helps a Child with Autism Spectrum
PECS helps a child on the autism spectrum communicate by teaching them to hand a picture card to another person to request or comment, building genuine two-way communication before spoken words arrive. Taught in structured phases, it reduces frustration, encourages the child to initiate, and often supports — not delays — spoken language. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow PECS helps a child with Childhood Apraxia of Speech
PECS helps a child with Childhood Apraxia of Speech by giving an immediate, no-speech-required way to communicate through exchanging pictures, reducing frustration and building the social foundations of language while motor-speech therapy continues. It is used alongside speech therapy, not instead of it, and research shows it does not hinder speech development. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow PECS Helps a Child with Global Developmental Delay
PECS helps a child with Global Developmental Delay by giving an immediate, low-pressure way to communicate — handing over a picture to ask for what they want before speech is ready. It reduces frustration, builds communication intent in clear stages, and often supports the emergence of spoken language. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow PECS Helps a Non-Verbal or Minimally Verbal Child
PECS helps a non-verbal or minimally verbal child communicate by exchanging a picture for what they want, starting with a simple, powerful exchange and building through phases towards sentences and commenting. It reduces frustration and often encourages speech rather than replacing it. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow PECS Helps a Child with Speech and Language Delay
PECS helps a child with speech and language delay by giving them an immediate, low-frustration way to communicate — handing over pictures to make requests and connect — while research shows it often encourages spoken words to emerge rather than holding speech back. It teaches the purpose of communication and grows from single pictures to simple sentences. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow therapy helps when the auditory system affects a child's development
When the auditory system affects a child's development, therapy combines audiology and hearing devices with speech and language therapy, auditory listening training and family coaching — helping the child detect sound and turn it into meaning, words and connection. Earlier support helps the developing brain make the most of hearing. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow can therapy help when the oral-motor system affects a child's development?
When a child's oral-motor system — the lips, tongue, jaw and cheeks used for sucking, chewing, swallowing and speech — is weak or poorly coordinated, therapy helps through play-based speech and language therapy, feeding and swallowing support, sensory comfort work and parent coaching that build strength and control. AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
Read the answer AnswerHow can we support communication development in a child with ADHD?
Children with ADHD often have strong language but scattered communication — interrupting, missing instructions, jumping topics. Support it at home with short structured turns, one-step instructions, a pause after questions, and visual reminders. Where following directions, conversational turn-taking or word-finding lags, a speech-language therapist alongside ADHD support helps.
Read the answer AnswerSupporting Communication in Children with Attachment Difficulties
Children with attachment difficulties communicate best when they feel emotionally safe. Build warm, predictable routines, follow your child's lead, and treat every glance, sound or gesture as a conversation. Connection and trust grow language together — celebrate the attempt over the correct word, and let progress unfold gently.
Read the answer AnswerHow to Support Communication with Auditory Processing Difficulties
Support a child with Auditory Processing Difficulties by reducing background noise, speaking slowly and clearly, pairing words with gestures and pictures, giving one instruction at a time, and allowing extra response time. A hearing check followed by a speech-language assessment guides personalised support.
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