Talk to a speech and language therapist

Are you concerned that your child is struggling with talking and understanding words? You are not alone. There are currently 1.9 million children across the UK who face the same challenges.

We know it can often be confusing to navigate a child’s development, that’s why we have two free services to support you:

• An advice line for parents or carers and practitioners to discuss concerns they have about a child
• A series of webinars designed to give parents the tools they need to support their child

Advice line

Our free advice line is a confidential phone call with an experienced speech and language therapist for families living in the United Kingdom. During the 30-minute call, you will be given the opportunity to talk through your concerns and questions regarding your child’s development.  

Our speech and language therapists will be able to provide you with information on typical development, as well as advice on how to support your child’s skills. They will also be able to signpost you to other services.  

Following the call, you will receive an email summary with tips, techniques and signposting to other helpful services.  

This service does not include meeting and assessing children. The speech and language therapist cannot give specific advice on topics such as diagnosis or the provision the child is receiving, but will aim to signpost to services and organisations that can help further. This service is only available to families living in the United Kingdom.

Booking Notice

We release advice line call slots every Friday for the week after next. We hope this will reduce the time to wait for a call with a speech and language therapist. Please check the advice line availability again after 12pm Friday for more call slots. In the meantime, please do book a place on to one of our Talking with your toddler webinars to receive some ideas for supporting your child’s speech, language and communication skills.

The advice line team, Speech and Language UK

Book your advice line appointment here.

Talking with your toddler webinars

Our free talking with your toddler webinars are for parents of children aged 12 months to 4 years who are concerned about their child’s talking and understanding of words. We offer seven different themed webinars which are led by an experienced speech and language therapist. Each will equip you with activities and approaches to encourage development. To help you feel confident, you will also be welcome to ask questions.  

One webinar takes place every week, and you can attend one or all of the webinars depending on your interest in the individual topics.

Our webinar topics are:

• Symbolic noises and first words
• Using everyday routines to support speech, language and communication skills
• Sharing books to develop speech, language and communication skills
• Using songs and rhymes to develop speech, language and communication skills
• Play and talk
• Talking more than one language
• How babies learn to talk (for children 12 to 18 months)

Following the webinars, we advise that you try out the strategies at home, and contact our advice line if your child has not made progress over a three-month period.

Book one of our Talking with your Toddler webinars here.