Our approach
The Symbol Speech and Language Therapy teams provide specialist consultation and services to children with special needs who experience learning and social needs, in association with communication, and/or eating/drinking needs. We work in partnership with purchasers to create innovative, evidence-based solutions that enrich the lives of our clients through the development of their skills and abilities. We provide speech and language therapy services to a wide range of clients, ranging from assessment and intervention through to training and consultation.
We are strongly committed to working with service providers to develop environments that enable clients to take part and communicate effectively, to make relationships and choices, to be respected and treated with dignity, while developing their communication skills. We achieve this through reviews of practice and environments, proposing and supporting change, and providing resources and training. Key to our success is jointly working with families and staff to enable individuals to communicate effectively and to develop their communication skills.
Our speech and language therapy services to children in the southeast of England fall into 4 categories;
- Special Schools
- Physical Disabilities
- Mainstream Services
- Early Years Services
Our teams are lead by senior speech and language therapists who work with other speech and language therapists, and co-workers and senior assistants / assistants. In each service we tailor the team to local needs and embedded into local structures, playing a full and committed role in local multidisciplinary teams and influencing the development of local services.
Our current services include:
- Pre-school early intervention services, including Sure Start programmes.
- Early Years programmes to provide collaborative training with LA staff to early years practitioners.
- Support in mainstream schools for children who have special needs, including Excellence Clusters.
- Services to mainstream schools to develop skills and develop a greater level of confidence in all education staff working with children with speech, language and communication needs.
- Services to special schools, funded directly by schools, Local Authorities and/or NHS Primary Care Trusts. These include LA provision and independent special schools catering for children with moderate learning disabilities, severe and profound learning disabilities, physical disabilities, and specialist provision including autism and specific language impairment.
We offer tailor-made training packages and consultative services to primary, secondary mainstream and special schools. For more information about these packages, please visit the Training section of the website.