What do you need help with: Speech, language and communication
Children and young people may experience difficulties relating to their language development, speech sound development, cleft lip and palate, deafness or loss of hearing, fluency (stammering), selective/situational mutism, voice or social communication.
How to make a referral yourself
You only need to make a referral to Children and Family Health Devon (CFHD) if your child or young person is school age (year R onwards). For children under school age, please use the link below to find out how to access speech, language and communication services within CFHD.
For school aged children (Year R onwards):
To make a referral you will need to download and fill in one or more forms and answer questions about what you need help with. Your answers will give our clinical specialists the essential information they need.
It helps if you can give us as much detailed information as possible, such as:
- how long the difficulties have lasted
- how they affect day-to-day life
- other relevant experiences
You may need to share information from a doctor, nurse, other healthcare professional, or school SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinator).
NOTE:
As a supplement to the referral form we would ask that you also complete:
*The Universally Speaking screener form if you have concerns about language (over 5 years old).
*The Speech Sound screener form if you have concerns about speech (we also accept similar screening tools such as Speech Link).
Information gathering form (additional information for all Speech, language and communication referrals)
If your child has a complex presentation or attends a specialist provision and would like speech and language therapy support please complete the request for help form alongside the screening tools
Additional information
Complex needs triage communication checklist
Useful resources and toolkits:
Sending the form back to us
We’d prefer that you email the form back to us at cfhd.devonspa@nhs.net.
When you email us, please make sure:
- the documents you send are only in Word (.doc/.docx), PDF (.pdf) or JPEG (.jpeg/.jpg) formats
- each document is attached separately and is less than 3MB in size
- you don’t attach multiple single pages
- the email is less than 10MB in total
If this is tricky for you, you can print out the form, fill it in by hand, and post it back to us at: Single point of Access, 1a Capital Court, Sowton Industrial Estate, Exeter EX2 7FW