Early Language Development – Refresh your Therapy Toolkit

Child-Led Therapy: Play, Participation & Positive Communication

A Study Day focusing on Child-Led or Non-Directive Therapy

The day focuses on Non-Directive Therapy in early language and communication development, the theory underpinning child-led therapy and the “How To’s” in this approach.

Key Themes:

• What does Child-Led really mean? Moving beyond just playing on the floor. It’s about communicative connections, creating ‘space to think’, and working through play choices.
• The evidence base: Considering why non-directive/child led approaches are effective (e.g., in engagement, generalization and motivation to interact, share play and communicate).
• The history of non-directive therapy in Speech and Language Therapy.
• It’s a Continuum: Acknowledging that “child-led” can be seen as a continuum, and it’s about finding the right balance of strategies for each child, family, and setting.
• Looking at the concept of Special Time in Adult-Child interactions – visiting Hanen, Palin PCI, Verve and other approaches which families are exploring such as gestalt language acquisition to draw on these approaches in individual language plans for children with developmental delay, autistic spectum disorder and other conditions.

SCRIPTS: Exploring Individual Language Routes in ASD: Profiles and Practical Strategies (Wholistic Language Facilitation)

This is about Wholistic Language Facilitation, exploring what is sometime known as a ‘gestalt’ style of language acquisition and ‘gestalt friendly’ therapy approaches.

SCRIPTS: Supporting Communication through Real-life Interactive Play – Therapy Strategies.

The SCRIPTS framework for looking at a child’s language learning style is introduced as a visual way of pulling together the theory for practical profiling and therapy. The approach guides you through working out which route to language a child is taking and mapping their direction and progress on a profile.

This Study Day focuses on the process of early language development and the individual routes taken by children.

We will return to the early literature and look at what is meant by Gestalt and Wholistic language learning and what this means when supporting children and families in therapy.

Prizant and Duchan introduced us to the idea of ‘Supports’ and what works for an individual learning language in a rapidly changing language world, with different speakers, shades of meaning and endless potential for confusion.

We focus on echolalia, the different types and functions of echolalia and how children take ‘wholes’ or chunks of language and use in daily communication. This is a gestalt.

After looking at different routes to language (Analytic and Gestalt modes) we will move on to consider how this can be put into practice in therapy. I am an ‘interactionist’ therapist and so much of the material will be based around learning language in interactions in everyday environments.

We will work together and spend time delving into the world of Wholistic (Gestalt) Friendly Therapy Approaches.

How do we pull together the evidence based language therapy strategies we use and adapt them to meet the needs of gestalt language learners?

This course goes back to the roots of gestalt learning style and its cognitive underpinnings, and scrutinizes the literature of Barry Prizant, Judy Duchan and others like Marge Blanc, who have followed in their tracks. The differences between Analytic mode and Gestalt mode of language acquisition is made clear.

I was lucky enough to attend a seminar by Judy when she visited City University of London on a research exchange semester. Her approach had already interested me as it was child centred and focused on the system of supports a child needed to thrive and enjoy communicating with others. She showcased the work of Stephen Calculator and his Inclusive approach to planning communication programmes.

Working at a nursery with special needs assessment places and a designated special provision for ASD in a mainstream school I developed an approach which integrated goals into the school day, with 3 Levels of Support.

This Study Day is designed for SLTs and may be of interest to specialist language facilitators. You will explore innovative techniques and take away strategies to enhance communication.