Speech and Language Therapy Service (Children)

Our Children’s Speech and Language Therapy Service is a specialist service supporting children and young people aged 0-19 with speech, language and communication needs. Support is also given to children and young people with eating and drinking disorders. 

Young people aged 19-25 are also supported with education, health and care plans.

Our team provides assessments, diagnosis and treatments for children and young people with:

• language and communication needs (including developmental language disorder)

• specific difficulties in producing speech sounds

• hearing impairment

• stammering

• autism/social interaction difficulties

• voice disorders

• selective mutism

How to Access the Service

Accessing the service is by referral only and children and young people must be registered with a Wirral GP.

Referrals can come from a range of healthcare professionals including health visitors, allied health professionals, GPs, paediatric consultants, school special education needs coordinators and nursery managers. 

Healthcare professionals can access electronic referral forms via SystmOne. GPs can use their own single access referral form.

Referrals from other professionals can be completed (see below) and emailed or posted.

Under 5s – speech, language or communication concerns

• Referral Form – under 5s

Primary school age – speech, language or communication concerns

• Referral Form – School Aged

• Referral guide and booklet

Secondary School age – speech, language or communication concerns

• referral form

Eating or drinking referral

• referral criteria

• referral form

EHCP

• EHCP Re-referral form

WellComm Assessment for professionals

GL Assessment – “Delayed language skills lead to under-performance later in life, yet many primary school children have unidentified speech and language difficulties. WellComm can help you to turn this around.

Both the Early Years and the Primary toolkits enable you to quickly and easily identify children needing support. They’re quick and simple to use (requiring no speech and language expertise), and the traffic light scoring format of the instant reports makes them quick to interpret.

Both toolkits come with an age-appropriate Big Book of Ideas providing a total of over 150 instant, play-based activities so you can take appropriate action straight away. Activities can be used with parents at home too, so that support is provided whether or not a child is referred to a speech and language therapist.”

When considering a referral to Speech and Language Therapy, for a child to up to the end of year 2, we ask that you complete a WellComm Assessment and attach score sheets to the referral including the date of assessment and child’s age when assessed.

For more information about the WellComm Assessment visit GL Assessment.

How do I get a copy of the WellComm Assessment?

Most Early Years and Primary School settings have copies of the WellComm Assessment. If you require a copy or further copies you can purchase via GL Assessment.

How do I use the WellComm Assessment?

You may already have staff in your setting who are familiar with using the WellComm Assessment who can support you.

Training videos for using the WellComm assessment can be found here via GL Assessment Support:

• GL Assessment

• Early Years Training

• Primary Training

What do I do after assessing a child?

The easy traffic light reporting method will highlight which children would benefit from extra support.

The WellComm Big Book of Ideas provides you with appropriate play-based intervention activities for use with individuals or groups of children. These activities can also be given to parents to use at home.

Please complete intervention sessions for at least 1 term after the assessment, followed by a review of the child’s progress before referring to Speech and Language Therapy.