Our speech and language therapy for children service provides support for children who live in Ealing, aged 0 to 18 years, who have problems with speech, language, communication, eating, drinking and swallowing.
We’re a team of over 70 speech and language therapists working with parents, carers and professionals.
Ealing children’s speech and language therapy (SLT) service is part of the Ealing service for children with additional needs (ESCAN), which brings together health, social care and educational services for children.
Through our work with children and their families, their schools and support settings, we aim to:
- Prevent speech, language and communication difficulties
- Give families and professionals the skills and confidence to support their child’s communication and swallowing
- Support the child to reach their full potential.
Telephone and teletherapy support
Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, we’re delivering parts of our service by phone and video calling, where possible.
Online training and workshops
We’re running all of our training and workshops online so that parents, carers and professionals can continue to access information and advice on communication.
Communication includes lots of different skills:
- Attention and listening: being able to focus and pay attention to others in order to learn
- Understanding of language: being able to understand what somebody has said or a question they’ve asked
- Using language (talking): using the right words, speaking in sentences and sharing your thoughts and experiences with others
- Social communication: understanding the world around us, interacting and building relationships with others, having a two–way conversation, understanding social situation and understanding how someone’s feeling
- Speech: pronunciation of speech sounds.
We work with children and families in different ways, including:
- Assessments
- Giving tips, advice and strategies
- Giving therapy in groups or individual sessions
- Training parents and professionals to give them skills and confidence
- Working in different places: schools, nurseries, children’s centres, clinics and children’s homes
- Working together with professionals to help children.
- Children’s centres
- Early start team (health visitors, early start workers, and community nursery nurses)
- Educational psychologists
- Occupational therapists
- Parent/carers
- School/nursery staff
- Social workers.
We help with:
- Continuing eating, drinking or swallowing difficulties.
- Selective mutism or speaking anxiety
- Social communication difficulties or Autism
- Speech sounds (pronunciation)
- Stammering
- Talking
- Understanding language
- Voice disorders.
Children in Ealing aged 0 to 5: early start team
We work to support the communication skills of children in Ealing. We help parents and professionals to understand more about speech and language development and give advice and tips to help.
Therapists regularly drop in to children’s centres across Ealing, offer free workshops and training sessions and run free groups.
Children aged 0 to 5 with speech and language needs: early years team
The early years team:
- Assess children who've been referred to the service
- Run communication workshops for parents/carers to learn more about how to help their child’s communication skills
- Run individual and group therapy sessions.
Children aged 3 to 18 in mainstream schools: mainstream team
The mainstream schools team provides speech and language therapy to children aged 3 to 18 who attend a mainstream primary school, secondary school or college across Ealing by:
- Supporting children who have a referral to speech and language therapy
- Setting up groups for children who don’t have a referral but who need some extra support
- Training school staff on how to identify and support different speech and language needs
- Working with school staff to create classroom environments that support communication
- Running workshops for parents/carers on how to support communication at home
- Running free training sessions for parents and staff in Ealing on a variety of topics. To find out more email: ealingslt.training@nhs.net
Children who attend special schools: special schools team
The special schools team provides speech and language therapy for children aged 3 to 18 who attend a special school in Ealing by:
- Supporting children who have a referral to speech and language therapy
- Training school staff on how to support different speech and language needs
- Working with school staff to create classroom environments that support communication
- Running workshops for parents/carers on how to support communication at home.
Children with difficulties with eating, drinking or swallowing: dysphagia team
The dysphagia team:
- Carry out assessments of children’s eating, drinking or swallowing
- Support children with eating, drinking or swallowing needs
- Work with parents, carers and professionals to give advice and tips.
Ealing Community Partners' children's speech and language therapy team are committed to providing care and services which are inclusive and treat everyone with respect.
We have a committed equality, diversity and inclusion group who are working to ensure we are an actively anti-racist team. We are fortunate to work in Ealing, one of the most ethnically diverse boroughs in the UK, and we are striving to ensure our team reflects the communities we serve. We seek to ensure we are allies to our LGBTQ+ colleagues and families as well as our neurodivergent colleagues and families.
Keep your language alive
Learning more than one language has lots of benefits. People who speak more than one language have better thinking and attention skills. Learning more than one language does not cause or contribute to any speech, language or communication difficulty.
Keep your language alive! Speak to your children in the language you are most confident and comfortable speaking. This gives them the best example of language to learn from.
Enjoy your language. It's important for your cultural and social identity. Children will learn English when they get to school or nursery.
Keep your language alive by:
- Telling jokes in your home language
- Reading stories in your home language
- Singing songs in your home language
- Using your home language in lots of different places in the community
- Repeating what your child has said in your home language if they respond in English
- Your child may need a referral to speech and language therapy if they are having difficulty communicating in your home language. Contact us by calling our advice line from Monday – Friday 1-4pm on 07512 716478. We can call you back with an interpreter if needed.
How to help your child’s talking at home:
- Crouch down to your child’s level and be face-to-face - this helps your child look at you and shows them you are interested
- Join in with what your child is playing with and copy them. This helps them play with you for longer.
- Use short, simple sentences to describe what they are doing during play and in the daily routine
- Try not to ask too many ‘empty’ questions that you know the answer to like ‘what are you doing?’ or ‘what colour is that?’ as this can make children feel pressured and less likely to respond
- Give your child choices even if you know what they want
- Repeat words again and again. This helps your child to learn them.
Sing and rhyme anytime
- Nursery rhymes and songs are rhythmic and repetitive – this helps your child learn new words
- The rhymes and rhythms help children be more aware of sounds
- Be face to face with your child so they can see all your facial expressions
- Keep your language alive by singing songs and rhymes in your home language
- Do lots of actions and facial expressions that your child can join in with
- Anyone can sing — you don’t need a thing. Your child will think you have the X-factor!
Watch less, talk more
Children need two-way interactions (them communicating, you responding) to learn language. Screen time does not help children’s talking because screens cannot respond to children like people can!
Screen time guidance:
- Children under 2: maximum 30 minutes a day
- Children aged 2-5: maximum 1 hour a day.
How to help:
- Turn the screen off when you’re not watching! Especially during mealtimes and when your child is playing. This helps them focus on their playing and talking and means that you and your child don’t need to compete with the TV.
- Choose programmes suited to their age
- Watch it with them, repeat new words and describe what is happening
- Watch it with them and describe what is happening
- Sing along and join in with the actions!
We run training sessions and groups for parents and children, including Makaton, autism awareness, talk and play sessions.
Follow us on facebook to find out about what’s coming up.
Ealing Children's Services is on YouTube, you can watch webinars on a range of subjects relating to speech, language and communication, including Autism, speaking anxiety, language development speech sounds. Visit the YouTube channel