Anna Chimenti

Anna qualified from City University London in 2009 with a Postgraduate Diploma in Speech and Language Therapy. She has worked as a Speech and Language Therapist in Bristol since 2010. She is a member of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) and Association of Speech and Language Therapists in Independent Practice (ASLTIP). She is also registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).

She has extensive experience working with children needing support with speech sounds, language skills and social communication in nurseries, primary schools and early years clinics, as well as devising and delivering parent and staff training covering a range of topics. Anna's particular area of interest is speech, language and social communication in the early years.

Anna is trained and licensed to deliver Hanen’s It Takes Two To Talk, Learning Language and Loving It, More Than Words and Teacher Talk programmes. She uses principles from these programmes in all of her early years language and social communication intervention work. She has specialist training in working with children with Down’s Syndrome, provided by Down’s Syndrome Educational International, and accesses additional supervision specific to this area.

She is also trained in the SCERTS programme for social communication and interaction as well as in Gestalt Language Processing, Makaton signing, Attention Autism and using Core/Communication Boards. As well as 1:1 therapy sessions, she can offer training to nursery or school staff.

She is experienced in treating language and speech sound disorders and completes regular training to keep up to date with emerging research. For example she has recently completed Shape Coding training.

Anna also has lots of experience working with bilingual and multilingual children and families and has an undergraduate degree in French, German & Russian.

Anna believes in child-led intervention for early years language and social communication and using parent coaching methods alongside direct therapy approaches to provide effective and evidence-based therapy. She also believes that all therapy should be neurodiversity affirming and has lived experienced of parenting neurodivergent children.

She has an enhanced DBS certificate and up to date safeguarding training. Anna spends her spare time walking, reading and doing puzzles with her children!