Nadine botha spraakterapie – Registered Bilingual Speech Language Pathologist

Why Speech Therapy is important

Speech Pathologists study, diagnose and treat communication disorders, including difficulties with the following: speaking, listening, understanding language, reading, writing, social skills, stuttering, using voice or difficulties with swallowing.

All communication disorders have the potential to isolate the individual from his or her social and personal environment. It is therefore necessary to provide appropriate and timely identification , referral and intervention of speech and language disorders.

Roles of a Speech-language Pathologist

Speech-language pathologists work to prevent, assess, diagnose and treat children and adults in the following areas:

Speech disorders – Articulation, Stuttering, Apraxia, Dysarthria, Voice and Aphasia
Language disorders – Developmental delay in receptive and/or expressive language
Social communication – Developmentally impaired, e.g. Autism or Down Syndrome
Cognitive-communication – Dementia, Stroke or brain injury
Swallowing disorders – Premature babies or Tracheostomy
Listening and Auditory Processing disorders
Refer to the Information page for more detailed descriptions

Benefits of Speech Therapy

Speech Therapists help people of all ages with different speech and language disorders, but there are also social benefits that come with therapy.

The first step: Assessment

The purpose of a speech and language assessment is to determine your child’s strengths and challenges related to a variety of areas and conclude if therapy would be beneficial in further developing skills and aiding his or her ability to communicate effectively with others.

The assessment takes approximately an hour.

We are contracted with most medical aids and do accept private patients. Please contact us for further details.

The way forward: Therapy

Speech and language therapy is an intervention service that focuses on improving a child’s speech and/or language abilities to understand and express language, including non-verbal language.

After the assessment, we set up a 30 minute weekly therapy session to address the individual’s needs and help remediate the problem. Therapy will continue on the set schedule as long as the individual is making progress toward their goals, attendance is good and goals are met. Meeting the individual’s goals quickly is the key and requires much effort on the individual’s part with cooperation and focus in therapy sessions, therapist’s part with staying focused on the goal, as well as, the family’s part with providing carryover and monitoring of learned speech exercises at home.

We are contracted with most medical aids and do accept private patients. Please contact us for further details.