Does Your Child Have Cerebral Palsy?
Our Expert Speech & Language Therapists Provide Evidence Based, Quality Therapy To Help Children With Cerebral Palsy
Some Facts About Cerebral Palsy (CP)
Cerebral Palsy is a term which covers several conditions occurring in the brain. They are caused either before, during, or just after birth due to injury to the brain.
Cerebral Palsy can affect a person’s control and coordination of their muscles, muscle tone, posture, balance and reflexes.
The effects of Cerebral Palsy can vary greatly from person to person, ranging from very mild effects to more severe effects which can make it difficult for people to control their limbs.
It is estimated that approximately one in every 400 babies in the UK is born with a type of Cerebral Palsy.
Some people with CP may have coexisting conditions such as intellectual disability, vision or hearing problems.
Cerebral Palsy is not a disease or illness to be ‘cured’. However, therapies such as Speech and Language Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy can support people with Cerebral Palsy to reach their full potential.
Children with Cerebral Palsy can struggle with:
Communicating verbally with others due to associated hearing difficulties. They may need support to use a visual form of communication such as sign language or a communication board.
Meeting developmental communication milestones at a typical age, if they have a concurrent learning disability.
Making their speech understood due to difficulties controlling and coordinating all the muscles needed for clear speech.
Development of gesture to communicate.
Modulating their voice and breath production for speaking.
Children with Cerebral Palsy and Communication Skills
Here are some of the ways that good speech and language therapy can help children with Cerebral Palsy and their families:
Supporting the child to develop their use and understanding of language.
Teaching the team around the child strategies to support language and other learning.
Supporting the child to develop their speech clarity and voice quality when appropriate.
Supporting the child to use an alternative or supportive means of communication when necessary. For example, Sign language or a visual communication book.
Supporting the child to develop their listening and attention skills when appropriate.
Signposting families to appropriate and reliable sources of information and support.
Tips for parents on how to support children with Cerebral Palsy
While you play with your child, provide a commentary using simple language to comment on what they are doing rather than asking them what they are doing.
If it can be difficult for others to understand your child’s speech, try making a poster or book with their favourite activities/ items/ foods/ people. Support them to use this to show others what they mean, if and when others don’t understand.
If you’d like to learn some basic Signs to use with your child, watching ‘Something Special’ (Mr Tumble) on CBeebies is a great place to start – watch the programme together and practice your signs!
Copy sounds, words and signs back to your child when they attempt to communicate. Always model the correct pronunciation/ word/ sign even if your child has made a slight error in theirs, but don’t make your child copy you.
Be responsive to any attempts your child makes to communicate – remembering that this might look like different behaviours as well as sounds, words and gestures.
Repetition is key! When we learn new words we need to hear them lots of times in context to understand their meaning. Try choosing one key word per day to focus on and repeat it lots of times.
How Our Speech and Language Therapy Can Help Children and Young People With Cerebral Palsy
We assess each child’s needs holistically and design our treatment plans around the unique needs of each child. At the centre of everything we do are the goals, aspirations and expectations of the child and their family.
Here are some of the many evidence-based therapy approaches and frameworks we are specially trained to use to help children with Cerebral Palsy develop their communication skills.
BSL, Makaton and Signalong Sign Language
Intensive Interaction
Colourful Semantics and Shape Coding
Elklan
Word Aware
Total Communication and AAC systems
Attention Autism for attention and listening skills
Pragmatic Organisation Dynamic Display (PODD)
Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)
Caroline Bowen speech sound disorders and childhood apraxia of speech
PROMPTS for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets
How can we help you and your child?
If you’re interested in how our expert speech and language therapy can help your child with Cerebral Palsy, click below to request a free telephone consultation with one of our therapists or to book an initial assessment appointment. We will assess your child’s strengths and needs and design a therapy package to suit your child’s unique learning style, and your budget. We can also support children and young people in the over one hundred schools that commission our schools speech and language therapy service.
