Spelfabet

The Speech Pathologists at Spelfabet work with school-aged children, teens and a few adults who have difficulties reading and/or spelling/writing. Often these are related to speech and/or language difficulties, so we can help with those too. Many of our clients have ASD, ADHD, SLD, DLD or other diagnoses.

At our first, 75 minute appointment, we usually assess phonological processing, word-level reading and spelling with standardised tests, provide feedback, answer questions, then write a report with recommendations. We can also assess speech sounds, receptive and expressive language, social communication, and/or provide hearing screening if these are areas of concern.

We usually offer weekly or fortnightly 50-minute individual therapy sessions to tackle decoding/spelling difficulties, using a linguistic/synthetic phonics approach. This includes early work on word-building with prefixes and suffixes, ‘flexing’ sounds/Set for Variability, and polysyllable words. We can also help with formulating and writing sentences, paragraphs and essays. Intervention is tailored to individual clients, with plenty of games and fun. We sometimes pair up/group younger clients.

We encourage parents/guardians to attend therapy sessions, so they can support home practice activities for a few minutes most days. We provide all the necessary resources, including specialist decodable and/or hi-lo books suitable for a range of ages and interests.

Appointments must be booked in advance. You can use our Make A Referral form to request an appointment, or ring (03) 8528 0138 or 0434 902 249. Leave us a message if we’re not able to answer straight away. Sessions outside school hours have longer wait times due to high demand. New clients are usually offered appointments during school hours, then shift to higher-demand time-slots as these become available.

You don’t need a doctor’s referral to work with us. We can work with self or plan-managed NDIS participants, and many of our clients are eligible for Medicare and/or private health insurance rebates. For years we have provided a small amount of free or low fee assistance to people in financial hardship, as well as providing free resources via our website and doing extensive unpaid advocacy work for evidence-based teaching/intervention. We are in the process of seeking accreditation as a Social Enterprise.

We don’t routinely diagnose Specific Learning Disorders (dyslexia/dysgraphia/dyscalculia), this is usually done by Educational and Developmental Psychologists, such as the ones at SPELD Vic. One of the criteria for an SLD diagnosis is having had at least six months of intensive, evidence-based literacy intervention, and we can assist with this.