Rowan Bale - Paediatric Speech and Language Therapy

My name is Rowan and I have been working as a paediatric speech and language therapist for 18 months now.

I decided to begin working with children after more than seven years working with adults, so there has been a lot to learn! But I wanted a new challenge and I have never regretted my decision for a second. 

It has been a lot of fun working with children.  I have learned a lot already, and can see many different interesting avenues to further my career in the future.

My role is to assess children, set targets for them, and send advice and programmes of work for parents and schools. I also refer some children to have a block of speech sound or early language therapy, and some parents to have programme demonstrations or advice sessions. In these cases, I set the treatment plans for our speech and language assistants to work from.

I work with children with a range of different speech, language and communication needs. Assessing children with speech sound delays and disorders is one of my favourite parts of my job.

I enjoy building a picture in my mind of the child’s errors, seeing the patterns, and coming to a decision about what the priority is to target in therapy. 

I use the CLEAR Phonology Screening Assessment to assess the child’s use of each sound in each word position.  I also ask children to try tricky sounds in isolation and if they are able to do that, to blend them with vowels and perhaps to copy me using the sound in a word.

I support the child to say the sound in isolation by using Jolly Phonics pictures and visually demonstrating how to say the sound. I might also use simple verbal descriptions or tips about how to make the sound. 

I also like to hear the child’s spontaneous connected speech, to learn how they are using sounds in words when they are not paying special attention to their pronunciation. For this, I engage the child in conversation, and if they are shy, I ask them to describe what is happening in some pictures.

Following the assessment, I sometimes set targets there and then and discuss with parents. Other times I need some time to analyse and reflect on the assessment findings before setting targets. 

To decide on priority targets for children with many speech sound errors, I use our speech sound guide, which is based on the chronological order children typically develop speech sounds.  I also consider which error-types are having the most impact on a child’s intelligibility.

Overall, I love my job because I enjoy observing and listening to children and families to understand their presentation/needs, and then using my clinical skills to make decisions and give advice. 

My job involves contact with people each day, whether that is face to face or video calls. We frequently have training updates from specialists in the team about a broad range of topics, so there are always opportunities to learn and develop our skills further.

The Speech and Language Therapy Team is a positive and supportive team to be a part of.