Communication and Interaction

Social Communication

Some children and young people have differences with their social communication and interaction, for example they may:

• process information differently (especially the spoken word)
• find inference confusing
• have interests that their peers do not share
• still be developing their ‘Theory of Mind’ (our ability to see another’s perspective)
• have social interactions that are different to some of their peers
• find it hard to consider the perspective of an individual with social interaction and communication needs which can lead to a difficulty with reaching a common understanding of one another
• find it difficult to work alongside other children which could result in an increase in stress levels or inappropriate behaviour
• display empathy in different situations to what may be expected; this can mean that there are times when they are unaware of other people’s feelings or find it hard to understand another person’s perspective
• have difficulty reading facial expressions and body language
• find playtimes and lunchtimes stressful. This can be due to the lack of structure and routine or because they have difficulty interpreting and using the unwritten rules of social interaction
• find team games and sports challenging.

Speech and Language

What are Speech and Language Needs?

Almost everything we do involves communicating – being able to make our needs known, expressing our likes and dislikes, interacting with others and building relationships are life skills we cannot afford to be without.

Communicating is also a key skill which underpins learning:

• Being able to understand instructions– and participate as an active learner by asking questions, giving views and discussing ideas.
• Being able to think things through, using language to reason, extend conceptual understanding and be creative.
• Learning to read and write: literacy skills are built on oral language skills – it is much harder to learn to write a word that you have never heard or can’t say yourself.
• Being able to manage your feelings by naming them and talking about them.

Acquiring speech and language skills is a complex process which goes remarkably smoothly for most children – but when individuals find this challenging it can have potential implications for lots of areas of their lives, particularly school.

Getting their needs correctly identified and the right support in place at the earliest possible opportunity can make a huge difference to their learning, relationships and wellbeing.

Here you will find a useful tool if you think your child may have a speech and language delay. 

Speech and Language Therapy, Rotherham

Speech and language therapy provides an assessment, diagnosis, intervention and advisory service for children and young people aged 0–19 with communication and/or swallowing difficulties. The service aims to work with families and education settings to help provide interventions and strategies to maximise the child or young person’s speech language and communication skills.

We see children with a variety of developmental or acquired communication or feeding difficulties. This may involve:

• Speech sounds
• Understanding language
• Using spoken language
• Stammering/dysfluency
• Anxiety around talking
• Voice quality
• Retaining and recalling vocabulary
• Social communication
• Feeding and swallowing

The service operates in a variety of locations: community clinics, special schools, specialist provisions, mainstream schools and hospital outpatient clinics.

Our Speech and Language Therapy service has an open referral system so anyone including parents who have concerns about a child or young person’s communication or feeding skills can refer into the service. Referrals are triaged by a specialist therapist in order to decide whether the referral meets our criteria and if so to decide which part of the service the child/young person should be seen in. Any referrals that do not contain enough information to triage will be sent back to referrers with a request for further information. Parent consent is needed for all referrals

Speech and Language Therapy Team, Rotherham

Phone; 01709 423230 / 01709 423229

Email: rgh-tr.cypstherapyservices@nhs.net

Speech and Language Therapy Department

Kimberworth Place,
Kimberworth Road,
Rotherham
S61 1HE