Milton Keynes Early Years Speech and Language Therapy Team works with pre-school-age children with speech and language difficulties in addition to feeding and swallowing difficulties.
The Early Years Team has staff who are specialists in:
- Hearing impairment
- Cleft lip and palate
- Social communication difficulties
- Dysfluency
- Speech and language disorders
- Augmentative and alternative communication
The team offers the following services:
The service offers two highly successful training programmes for parents to help their children’s communication development:
- It Takes Two to Talk, for parents of children with speech and language difficulties
- More Than Words, for parents of children with social interaction and communication difficulties
The service is for pre-school-age children (0 to rising five years) with feeding, swallowing, and speech and language difficulties. Children must be registered with a Milton Keynes general practitioner (GP).
Please complete online referral form for pre-school aged children.
Parents and carers are advised to access the advice and resources tab on this website for information and strategies on how to support your child’s speech, language and communication development.
Bus: 1, 6, 25, 28, 34, 150, F70
The service is available from 8:00am to 4.00pm, Monday to Friday, excluding bank holidays.
The team works in a range of different locations across Milton Keynes and the surrounding villages, including early years education settings and health centres.
If you need help in a crisis, please do the following
- Contact the CNWL service looking after you during their office hours
- If the crisis is during when your service is closed, there are alternative options provided by the NHS found on this page.
- If you are not already being looked after by CNWL or elsewhere within the NHS, see your GP during normal working hours as they can then refer you to a local service.
Find your closest GP on NHS Choices.
We have developed a range of advice and resources that you can use to support your child's speech and language development.
Please also take a look at this short video that talks about key strategies you can use to help develop your baby or young child's speech, language and communication skills - created by our colleagues at Hillingdon Paediatric Speech and Language Theerapy)
Please find links below for videos of our Speech and Language Therapist, Rachel Sawford, demonstrating the signs that we would typically cover on the 'Developing and Using Signing' course that is currently unavailable on a face to face basis due to current government guidelines. Rachel has broken up the course into eight sections and would recommend watching them in order.
Please note that the Developing and Using Signing course in Milton Keynes is based on Signalong signs. You can find free resources and activities to download on the Signalong website. It includes a training handbook featuring how to read the Signalong illustrations, plus 27 free signs. You will also find links to Signalong YouTube videos of Nursery Rhymes and how to perform them.
Developing and Using Signing - course videos
Stories with Symbols is a resource to make stories more accessible and enjoyable, especially for children and young people who have speech, language and communication needs.
We value feedback about our service so please let us know about your experience by completing this survey.
CNWL also have a Patient Feedback and Complaints webpage. If you would like more information about compliments and complaints please visit that page.