Speech, language and communication underpin everything we do - making our needs known, expressing our likes and dislikes, interacting with others and building relationships.

We often take these skills for granted, but many children struggle to communicate. They have speech, language and communication needs.

At Southbury we know that speech, language and communication are essential for reading, learning in school, for socialising and making friends, for understanding and controlling emotions and feelings.

Some of the things we look out for are:

• children might have speech that is hard to understand
• they might struggle to say words or sentence
• they might not understand words that are being used or instructions they hear
• they may have difficulties knowing how to talk and listen to others in a conversation.

We have very experienced staff who work with individuals or small groups of children who need support with confidence, listening and social skills.

Please find below various advice handouts for you to read:

• Use of words
• Verbs
• Strategies to strengthen vocabulary 
• Single word objects
• Requesting 'more'
• Naming objects
• Early play skills 
• Developing early language