Speech therapist helping a child
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Speech Pathology

Infant and Child Speech Therapy
Adult Speech Therapy
Delivered in the home or at school
Weekly or Fortnightly
Additional Therapy Assistants are available
Approved NDIS providers
Inclusive and specialists in cultural diversity
Translators available

What Is Speech Pathology?

Speech Pathology is a field of study that focuses on a range of human communication and swallowing disorders, affecting people of all ages. Around the world this profession is known by names such as “Speech Therapist” or “Speech-Language Pathologist”. In Australia, an allied health professional who works in this field, is most commonly referred to as a “Speech Pathologist” or “Speech Therapist”. You may have heard have heard us being called “speechies”, which is much easier to say!

Communication involves many different skills (see below) and is important for building connections, learning, safety, independence and participation in activities. Speech Pathologists are concerned with helping people who have difficulties communicating; so that they understand and are understood by others. We also support people who have difficulties swallowing. Eating and drinking is important not only for a person’s nutrition and hydration; but also their overall health and quality of life.

To put it simply, Speech Pathologists focus on how a person’s structures from the head to the chest affect their ability to communicate and swallow. Speech Pathologists often work together with other medical and allied health professionals; because difficulties with communication and eat/drinking often impact other areas of a person’s health, their function and quality of life. Speech Pathologists will work closely with you and your supports to help you engage in everyday activities; that are meaningful, important and enjoyable to you.

Difficulties in any of the below areas are common reasons why a person may need to see a Speech Pathologist.

Therapy Circles Australia Areas of Speech Pathology

Functional Assessment – developing an understanding of your needs

  • Generally a thorough case history will be taken by meeting with you and the people in your life, (such as support workers, family and therapists), to get a shared understanding of your individual needs and context.
  • Formal and informal assessments may be completed to establish a baseline for monitoring future progress and to help inform therapy goals.
  • Observations of you communicating or eating in different environments may take place to get an understanding of your function.

Planning and goal setting – goal setting as a team and developing the plan

  • We work with you to set person-centred goals, which are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and have a set time frame (SMART!).
  • We develop the Speech Pathology Therapy Plan: this will take into account your budget, expectations for therapy, resources available and other services that may be involved.
  • We work with the people around you to work out what supports, skill development, environmental change, tools and resources, and/or training might be required.

Implementation – putting our plans into action

  • Speech Pathology Services come under the NDIS’s “Capacity Building” budget, meaning that these supports are funded with the ultimate goal of building the capacity of you and your supports to limit the functional impact of your disability.
  • We provide you and the people around you with tailored education and training on the best ways to support you to achieve your communication and mealtime goals. This is because you spend the vast majority of your time outside of therapy, and are more likely to make progress when you are consistently supported to implement the changes, strategies, and skill building targeted in therapy.
Therapy Circles Australia Why Upskill Your Supports

Maintenance and Review

  • We will use observation, various forms of data, outcome measures and make notes to help us identify what has been effective.
  • We explore barriers that might come up and problem solve these with you and your support network.
  • With your consent, we share our learnings with other supporters and stakeholders, that may not have been involved in the whole therapy process.
  • We capture evidence to monitor for changes and progress. We then use this information to work with you to make changes to the therapy plan, as needed.
  • Face-to-face meetings or observations with you and/or your support people
  • Telephone conversations or emails with you and/or your support people
  • Internal liaising – communicating with the Therapy Circles Australia therapy team via telephone calls, emails or direct meetings.
  • External liaising – communicating with other supports you may have via telephone calls, emails or direct meetings (e.g. medical professionals, school staff etc.).
  • Progress notes.
  • Scoring and analysing assessments or data/outcome measures; and communicating these findings with you/and or your support person.
  • Developing therapy plans.
  • Upskilling therapy assistants to implement therapy (if applicable), developing Therapy Assistant Plans and reviewing progress intermittently so that Therapy Assistant Plans can be amended.
  • Resource making.
  • Preparation and delivery of training to your support people and key communication partners.
  • Report writing.
  • Travel to you and/or your support people.