Therapies
Overview
The St Marylebone CE Bridge School adopts a whole school approach to supporting and developing students’ speech, language and communication skills. Speech and Language Therapy is central to the students’ school experience.
Speech and language therapists work closely with school staff to ensure our school is a communication friendly environment. Therapists share specialist knowledge with staff through an ongoing communication focussed staff training programme to enable access to meaningful learning for students. All teachers have joint planning sessions with a Speech and Language Therapist in order to create accessible and effective lessons and learning resources.
Therapists also lead on deliver communication programmes to whole class groups. These programmes include structured programmes targeting language comprehension and expression, learning around social communication and functional communication skills such as handling job interviews. Where students require more intensive intervention, Speech and language therapists work with students individually and in small groups.
Speech and language therapy can be used to help students to develop their attention and listening skills, social interaction and friendship skills, functional communication skills, language for learning, independent learning skills, emotional understanding and self-regulation skills and awareness of communication strengths and needs.
Intervention is tailored to be student centred and student views are central to the planning and carrying out of intervention. Students are encouraged to take ownership of their communication programmes and are supported to identify target areas for intervention based on their own experiences.
Every student had an individual communication plan which is updated yearly. Progress towards communication targets is measured on a termly basis and shared with students, staff and parents. Wider assessments of students’ communication skills using standardised measures are carried out annually.
Parent input is highly valued and feedback is much appreciated by the therapy team. Therapists work closely with parents through regular contact and parent meetings. The therapy team are currently involved in the planning of parent coffee mornings to discuss speech and language provision for individual students at the Bridge school, and to offer tailored advice and support to parents.