Speech and language therapy (SLT)

We provide specialist assessment, diagnosis and treatment of people over the age of 16 who have communication or swallowing difficulties.

Speech and language therapists (SLTs) work alongside families, carers and other professionals to support you. We can see you in a community clinic, a hospital, your own home or your nursing or residential home, depending on the nature of your communication or swallowing difficulty. We aim to treat and help you to manage your communication or swallowing difficulty, and we will provide you and your family or carer/s with plenty of advice.

• Learn more about communication difficulties
• Learn more about swallowing difficulties

SLTs help manage a range of long-term conditions including degenerative diseases (such as Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, dementia and motor neurone disease), those experiencing acute illnesses which may exacerbate communication or swallow difficulties such as COPD or infections, or those undergoing treatment or rehabilitation for head and neck cancers.

Referral

Please visit our referral page for details on how to make a referral.

We are unable to see patients who have lifelong conditions such as learning disabilities, dysfluency or those with communication difficulties secondary to hearing impairments. If this is you, please turn to specialist services that are available to support you.

Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation is an important part of the recovery process.

We’ve worked hard to develop expertise in swallow and communication rehabilitation and are proud of our range of innovative programmes to support our patients in their recovery journey.

Our therapists are qualified in delivering specialist techniques such as IOPI (Iowa Oral Performance Instrument), Expiratory Muscle Strength Training (EMST) and AmpCare. Your therapist will advise if one of these programmes is suitable for your needs.

If you have been recommended to follow swallow rehabilitation exercises, our self-help videos may be of interest.

For other forms of rehabilitation, please see our rehabilitation service.

Contact us

Our community teams are based at:

Our head and neck cancer teams are based at

Conquest Hospital