Speech Therapy Clinic

Cleft Lip and Palate is the second most common congenital structural anomaly with a higher incidence rate reported in Hong Kong. Even after primary repair of the palate, the child’s speech may not always develop normally. Our clinic provides assessment and intervention services from pre-school age to adulthood.

Our perceptual speech assessment informs us if direct speech therapy is required as well as the type of therapy. We also initiate referral for instrumental assessment(s) of palate function of speech to determine whether further surgery is required.

Our clinic also provides a speech and language service for children with other craniofacial anomalies including craniofacial dysostosis syndromes e.g. Apert syndrome, Crouzon syndrome.

Dysphagia refers to problems with swallowing which could be due to various medical conditions. The most common causes of dysphagia include stroke, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, head and neck cancer, respiratory diseases, congenital anomalies including preterm, cleft lips/ palate, head and neck problems, digestive disorders, cerebral palsy, neurogenic impairment and congenital heart diseases, etc. People of all ages can have dysphagia, from the moment one is born until the later stages of life. Timely diagnosis of dysphagia is important because it can have fatal consequences including malnutrition, dehydration and pneumonia. In most cases, dysphagia can be managed through compensatory or rehabilitative strategies, and in some, further collaboration with medical doctors including surgeons is required to effectively manage dysphagia.

Our service includes comprehensive assessment of swallowing function and individualised treatment programmes for both children and adult that considers the needs of the client and is evidence-based.

Fluency disorders refer to the disorders that affect a person’s ability to speak fluently. These may include developmental stuttering, neurogenic stuttering, cluttering, etc. Our clinic provides assessment and treatment to children and adults with fluency disorders. Treatment for children includes indirect and direct therapy while treatment for adults includes speech restructuring and basic cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Our clinic also specialises in providing Lidcombe Programme for children with stuttering.

A disorder in any part of the auditory system will affect a child’s hearing ability and thus, communication. Children with hearing impairment may have difficulties in developing speech and language. Aural rehabilitation/habitation plays an important role in the communication abilities of both children and adults with hearing impairment. 

Our clinic provides the following specific services:

• Auditory and speech perception training
• Verbal speech and oral language training
• Augmentative communication with visual strategies
• Interaction and communication strategies

Our clinic also provides pre-operative assessment and post-operative rehabilitation/habilitation to clients with various types of implantable hearing devices such as cochlear implant and auditory brainstem implant.

Children who display either slower or atypical development in understanding or expressing language when compared with children of similar age. 

Our clinic provides detailed assessments and differential diagnoses on the nature and type of language disorder, with recommendations on the management and individualised treatment programmes.

Neurogenic communication disorders are caused by damage to the brain or the nerves. There are four types of communication disorders - aphasia, dysarthria, apraxia of speech, cognitive-communication disorders.

• Aphasia is caused by damage to the parts of the brain that process language. Patients with aphasia may have problems with any or all of the following language modalities: understanding of language, using spoken language, reading and writing.
• Dysarthria is caused by damage to the nervous system that controls speech movements. It may result from weakness, slowness or uncoordinated movements of the lips, tongue, face, throat and chest during speech production which leads to poor speech clarity.
• Apraxia of speech is caused by damage to the sensory-motor parts of the brain that program speech movements. Patients with apraxia of speech will have inconsistent speech errors, slow and labored speech as well as the wrong order of sound and/or word production.
• Cognitive-communication disorder is caused by concussion, traumatic brain injury, dementia, mild cognitive impairment, right hemisphere disorder, etc.

Our clinic provides comprehensive evaluation and individualised treatment programme for patients with cognitive-communication disorders with an aim to maximise the functional communication skills of individuals.

Speech sound disorders (SSD) may manifest as difficulties with perception, articulation/motor production, phonological representation of speech sounds, and/or with prosody (tone, rhythm etc. of a language). The causes of SSD can be known, e.g. genetic causes, or unknown. There are several types of SSD. For each type of SSD, the cause or level of breakdown is different and the speech symptoms are also different. Sometimes, the SSD persists beyond childhood into adolescence and adulthood. Early intervention is important in managing SSDs as it can have learning, social and psychological impact.

Our clinic provides detailed assessments and differential diagnoses on the nature and type of SSD, with recommendations on the management and individualized treatment programmes.

Social communication deficits is a core feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Individuals with ASD may experience difficulties in daily social contexts such as relating and interacting with peers, misunderstanding communication partners, difficulty establishing and maintaining friendships, etc.

Our assessment identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the individual and our individualized treatment programmes, which may include individual and group therapy, facilitates development of social cognition, social competencies, problem solving, self-regulation and self-monitoring skills.

Voice disorders may affect a person’s voice quality and everyday voice use. Voice disorders may result from poor vocal techniques and habits, structural deviation and neurogenic impairment. Our clinic provides comprehensive voice assessment and treatment for both children and adults with voice disorders. Treatment aims to improve the person’s voicing techniques, develop healthy voice habits as well as pre-surgical care and post-surgical voice therapy for those who require vocal surgery.

Our clinic assists those who may need referral to laryngologists for further voice assessment and management.