Speech and Language Therapy for Developmental Language Disorder

If your child has ongoing difficulties understanding or using language, speech and language therapy can help identify what they are finding difficult and what support may be useful. All Join In provides speech and language therapy for children with Developmental Language Disorder in Bristol and the surrounding areas, with support available at home, school or nursery.

Developmental language disorder is a common but not widely known difficulty in learning language. It is not part of autism or related to a child’s ability to learn other skills. It is a very specific difficulty learning the language(s) they are exposed to and does not resolve with time. It used to be known as Specific Language Impairment (SLI).

Book an assessment with All Join In if you are looking for support with Developmental Language Disorder, language difficulties or speech and language therapy in Bristol or the surrounding areas.

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Developmental Language Disorder Support In Bristol

Developmental Language Disorder, often shortened to DLD, can affect how a child understands and uses spoken language. Children with DLD may find it harder to learn new words, understand instructions, build sentences, explain their ideas or use language for learning and friendships.

All Join In provides children’s speech and language therapy in Bristol and the surrounding areas for children with Developmental Language Disorder and ongoing language difficulties. Assessment can help build a clearer picture of your child’s strengths, areas of need and how their language skills are affecting everyday communication, learning and confidence.

Support for DLD will depend on your child’s age, needs and setting. Therapy may focus on vocabulary, grammar, sentence building, understanding language, telling stories, sequencing ideas or using visual approaches such as Shape Coding to support language learning.

For school age children, speech and language therapy can also help parents and school staff understand how language difficulties may affect learning in the classroom. All Join In can work with families, schools and nurseries where helpful, so the adults around your child have practical strategies to support communication in everyday life.

  • If your child has another area of difference, such as autism, they would not be considered to have developmental language disorder. In this case they would be described as autistic with an associated language disorder.

  • A diagnostic decision about DLD should take the following areas into account:

    • Reports from parents, teachers and other professionals

    • Speech and language assessment (formal and informal)

    • Functional impact of language difficulties

    • Observations within natural settings

  • Guidelines from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) advise that the diagnosis of
    DLD should be given when:

    • The child has language difficulties that create barriers to communication or learning in everyday life

    • The child’s language problems are unlikely to be resolved by the age of 5 years

    • The problems are not associated with a known biomedical condition such as brain injury,
      neurodegenerative conditions or chromosome disorders.

  • In these cases, a full bi-or multilingual case history is required and standardised English formal assessment scores must be treated with caution. Learning more than one language is not a cause of language disorder.

  • Anna is currently using the Shape Coding approach with a 7 year old at school to teach grammatical structures visually.