Understanding Your Speech Pathology Journey

We will guide you through your speech pathology journey, no matter what it looks like, and provide you with the support, skills and understanding to help your child grow.

Start Your Journey with the Right Support

Your journey with speech pathology begins with a commitment to proactive care and the understanding that every child thrives when supported by a strong, nurturing network. At A Growing Understanding, our approach is rooted in our core values of Celebration, Accountability, Respect, Excellence, and Care, ensuring that every family feels empowered and valued.

If you’re wondering, “Does my child need a speech pathologist?”, know that early intervention is key. Rather than waiting to see if your child “grows out of it,” we encourage you to adopt a “Support and See” approach. This means familiarising yourself with key communication and feeding milestones and recognising that early, targeted support can make all the difference. A dedicated speech pathologist can assess your child’s unique needs, provide you with effective tools to support their development and guide you through those critical early stages.

We’ve distilled the journey into three simple steps:

Support and See: Learn about the essential milestones in communication and feeding, and adopt a proactive mindset to address any concerns early.
Find a Speech Pathologist: Connect with a qualified professional who can evaluate your child’s needs and help tailor a plan that sets them up for success.
Start Your Services with Care: Begin engaging with our services, where we provide a supportive, family-centred environment designed to empower you and foster your child’s growth.

Adopt the Support and See Approach

Find a Speech Pathologist

Start Your Services with Care

By taking these steps, you’re ensuring that your child receives the dedicated support they need to thrive – both at home and within our community. We’re here to guide you every step of the way.

The Right Speech Pathology Services

Finding the right speech pathology service is a critical step in supporting your child’s growth and development. With so many options available, it can feel overwhelming to know where to begin. At A Growing Understanding, we focus exclusively on paediatric speech pathology for children aged 0–18, ensuring our expertise remains sharp and our care is tailored specifically to your child’s unique needs.

As a registered NDIS provider, we deliver early childhood interventions that are evidence-based, accessible, and family-centred. Our services are eligible for government rebates through Medicare and may also be covered by various private health insurance plans, helping to alleviate financial burdens and ensuring our care is both age-appropriate and impactful.

Drawing on our “How to Choose a Speech Pathology Service” resource, we have streamlined our offerings so you can easily identify what matters most – whether it’s flexible appointment options (in-person, online, or outreach) or a commitment to truly inclusive, personalised care. Our approach can support your family’s needs and set your child on the path to ongoing success.

Your Next Steps

The first step in accessing our services is to contact our Client Experience Officers, who will work with you to arrange your First Appointment. This appointment, typically a 50-minute parent-only session, is the critical starting point of your child’s journey with us. During this session, our Speech Pathologist will listen to your concerns, review your child’s history, and work with you to set clear, achievable goals.

Based on this discussion, a tailored Speech Pathology Plan will be developed to guide future care. In some cases, the Speech Pathologist may recommend that your child also attend to enhance the assessment process.

Following your First Appointment, our focus shifts to ensuring continuity of care. If further assessment is needed, we’ll schedule additional sessions to delve deeper into your child’s needs. Ongoing therapy appointments and quarterly review sessions ensure that your child’s progress is regularly monitored and that their Speech Pathology Plan is updated as needed. Our goal is to provide seamless support – through assessments, group programs, and/or individual speech therapy services – to help your child reach their full potential.

Helping You Navigate Your Concerns

Typically, children begin to use their first words at around 12 months of age. By 2 years of age, it is expected that children will use approximately 100 words and start combining two words together ie. “Bye Mummy”.

Communication and language skills can develop at different rates so it can be hard to know if your child is behind. However, if your child does miss a language development milestone, they could be regarded as having a language delay. These delays could result in your child having trouble expressing their ideas and thoughts (expressive language) or understanding instructions and questions (receptive language).

If you have noticed that your child is not saying as many words as other children the same age, it could be tempting to take the advice of those around you and just ‘wait and see’ or think that they may ‘grow out of it’. But this can mean precious time is lost during their critical learning phase.

Early intervention is critically important when it comes to your child developing the communication skills necessary for future success in their academic and personal lives. Our Hanen certified speech pathologists are here to answer your questions. We possess the skills required to assess your child’s strengths and provide supports that can help your child grow.

Find more information on the ‘warning signs’ here.

By the time your child commences preschool, they will be starting to use much longer sentences. While this may present with some mispronunciations, their speech should be understood by people outside of the family about 75% of the time. By five years of age, anyone (including unfamiliar listeners) should be able to understand your child’s speech in conversation 95-100% of the time.

If you are concerned about your child’s speech development, we advise that you should first have their hearing checked by an audiologist. Hearing is an important part of learning how to say sounds correctly, and is a great place to start if you are concerned.

Our certified speech pathologists can also assess your child to see if the sounds they are using are appropriate for their age. In particular, we would recommend that you make contact with us if your child is hard to understand, if they are frustrated with attempts to communicate, if their speech appears very effortful, if they are using very few words, or if they are not using sounds at the start of words (e.g., saying “ish” for fish).

Some children have a difficulty with receptive language – the ability to understand information and follow instructions. Difficulties with receptive language is not necessarily associated with hearing. Children with receptive language difficulties can often hear quite well, but they have trouble understanding some words or have difficulty completing tasks as they become longer or more challenging.

Our speech pathologists can assist in determining if your child’s difficulties are a result of challenges with understanding language (receptive language), and provide you and your child with supports to help them to listen and follow instructions more easily.

Reading and writing are important skills to master, and children with a history of speech sound and language difficulties are at increased risk of reading and writing difficulties. Speech pathologists are able to assess and support children with reading, comprehension, vocabulary, spelling and writing.

Our speech pathologists can assess your child’s reading and writing abilities and determine if their skills are age appropriate or if your child requires assistance. We can work closely with your child’s teacher and learning support team to optimise their learning outcomes within the classroom.

Stuttering can affect children, adolescents and adults. Around 1% of the population experiences stuttering at any given time and as many as 5% across a lifetime. Stuttering usually starts in early childhood, often by the age of three. In most cases, the first sign of stuttering is the child repeating syllables such as “I…I…I…wanna…” or “Where…where…where is ….?” Stuttering may also change in type or frequency over time. It may decrease or even seem to go away for periods of time. Often, as stuttering develops, children begin to show signs of effort and struggle while speaking.

Early intervention from a speech pathologist is recommended if your child is showing signs of stuttering. Our speech pathologists can work with your child to reduce the impact of stuttering. We can implement the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention which is a treatment developed specifically for stuttering in children younger than six. However, there is research to support use of this program with primary school aged children as well.

Our speech pathologists are skilled in working with Autistic children and families, and helping them communicate and connect in a way that works for them. We take a neurodiversity-affirming approach and ensure all supports are responsive to individual needs.

If your child has little or no speech, we can also look at ways of introducing alternatives, such as signing or the use of technology that supports communication like Augmentative Assistive Communication (AAC).

If you have any concerns about your child’s development, contact us to discover how we can help your child grow.

Children develop at different rates, but speech pathologists can give professional advice on whether a child’s difficulties are expected for their age or if an assessment is warranted. Essentially, you may find speech pathology beneficial for your child if:

your child takes longer than average to learn new words or build sentences
you or others have difficulty understanding your child
your child has difficulty following instructions or understanding new information
you find yourself repeating or rephrasing instructions and information for your child
your child is becoming frustrated as he / she is finding it difficult to communicate
your child struggles to form sentences or tell stories
your child displays oral motor or feeding difficulties
your child has difficulty with speaking clearly, or has a stutter
your child is having vocal difficulties ie. speaks loudly, very softly or with a harsh or husky voice

We urge parents to seek early assessment, diagnosis and therapy for communication problems, particularly prior to school entry.

You don’t need a referral from a GP or other healthcare provider to see a speech pathologist. However, if you are wanting to see a speech pathologist working in private practice then your GP may be able to write a Chronic Disease Management Plan. This plan will provide you with access to up to 5 appointments, where a rebate can be applied.

If you have concerns about your child’s communication skills, an up-to-date hearing assessment is recommended before seeing a speech pathologist. An updated hearing assessment is also recommended if your child has a history of middle ear infections.

You can contact us by phone, email or use the contact page on this website. Our staff will collect information from you such as your child’s age, contact details, appointment preferences and what you are concerned about. Typically, an appointment time can be provided to you at that time of contact.

There are a number of funding solutions that may be available for your child. A basic outline is as follows, but please visit our Bookings and Fees page for more information, or download our FREE Speech Pathology Funding Guide.

Medicare – Allied Health Initiative for Chronic Disease Management Items – previously known as Enhanced Primary Care (EPC) plans. A rebate of $55.10 is available for up to 5 appointments when a Chronic Disease Care Plan has been completed by a GP.

Children can access Medicare items under the Helping Children with Autism program provided they meet the requirements of each service and have not already accessed services under the Better Start for Children with a Disability initiative. A rebate of $77.10 is available for the following:

Up to four diagnostic / assessment services from a speech pathologist (item number 82005 – for a child under 13 years of age).
Up to 20 treatment services from a speech pathologist (item number 82020 – for a child under 15 years of age, providing a treatment and management plan is in place before their 13th birthday).

Private Health Funds – Speech Pathology services can be rebated if you have Ancillary cover with your private health fund.

Contact your health fund directly to determine the rebate amount and the maximum amount you can claim per person or family in a calendar year. You cannot claim through both Medicare and your Private Health Insurer for the same session.

A Growing Understanding Speech Pathology is committed to keeping costs low. That is why we take the time to talk with families and ensure we can meet your child’s needs and deliver a service that is appropriate for you and your budget. We can also help identify any assistance programs that you could access including The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)

Speech pathologists can work with children and adults to help them develop and grow their communication skills.

At A Growing Understanding Speech Pathology we work with children who have difficulty with speech, language, communication, reading, writing and even swallowing.