Help Me To Talk

11/04/2025

Very excited to share our new website which launched today - come and give us a visit!

Professional, friendly, caring speech and language therapy for children across Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

12/01/2025

🌟 Exciting News for 2025! 🌟

Help Me To Talk are thrilled to introduce our new Coaching and Advisory Service! 🎉

💬 What We’re Offering:
Personalised 30-minute sessions for parents, available via telephone or Zoom, designed to empower you with practical tools to support your child’s speech and language development at home.

🧡 Why Choose Us?
• Discuss your child’s communication needs or assessment results.
• Receive tailored advice, strategies, guidance and techniques from our expert therapists.
• A great option for parents waiting for therapy on long NHS waiting lists and those just wanting some reassurance — we’re here to bridge the gap and provide support in the meantime.

📍 Who Can Benefit?
This service is ideal for parents of children with mild speech and language delays — but is not suitable for children who are not yet speaking or complex cases requiring direct, one-on-one therapy.

📅 Available Nationwide
No matter where you are in the UK, we’re here to support you!

👉 Ready to get started? Contact us today for more information, Terms and Conditions and pricing at hello@helpmetotalk.co.uk.

Let’s work together to support your child’s communication journey 💛

16/10/2023

So many of my speech kids are loving lego as a motivator at the moment, and so am I!

I have only recently discovered how perfect these smaller lego models are for a session - the instructions break down into just 1 or 2 pieces a time, so I will say "We are going to do X number of trials, and then you get the next piece!" The kids love having a project to work on and it keeps them focused on their speech sounds, knowing they will get the next piece after each set of trials.

Today, I used this cute little shop in 3 of my sessions - it was the perfect length to complete in a 30 minute session and they all really enjoyed it!

29/09/2023

We don’t often show our faces on here, so thought it was a good time to re-introduce ourselves!

We are Ali and Naomi and we set up Help Me To Talk to enable us to continue working in the job we both loved whilst also juggling the other responsibilities that come with having a young family. Although we both loved our time in the NHS, Help Me To Talk has given us the flexibility and freedom to spend more time 1:1 with children and their families, as well as more time with our own families!

We have over 25 years experience between us, and both of us are specialists in speech sound disorders - but we have a brilliant team of therapists who work with us to support children with a wide range of communication difficulties. Feel free to get in touch if you want to discuss your child!

26/09/2023

Re-sharing our post from a few years ago about why some children can find it hard to talk about their day after school. There are many strategies you can use to connect with your child about their day and bombarding them with questions (that we naturally want to ask) may get the least response!

19/09/2023

Such a gorgeous thank you from the family I have spent a year working with today. Their lovely little girl had highly unintelligible speech when we started and has given her all in every single session we have had- plus, she was an absolute delight to work with and had me laughing out loud every week. Knowing that this little one is starting Reception and can now be understood by her teachers and friends makes this the best job there is ❤️

13/09/2023

Organising my resources over the weekend I discovered my bag of little wind-up toys sitting forgotten at the back of a drawer. I popped them in my bag on Monday thinking I might be able to use them in a session.

Well….they have just been used in their 9th session of the week and everyone has loved them! Ways these have come in handy in speech sound sessions this week:

- Having a turn at winding up a toy after a certain number of trials
- Putting speech cards down at random and seeing where each toy lands, then saying the word
- Lining the cards up and seeing where a toy gets to on the line, then saying the word
- Having a toy hop between minimal pair cards as we say each word (pictured below!)
- Having a toy walk between two cards and then making them into a phrase: “Mouse walked from shoe to shower”
- Racing the toys as a reward at the end of the session

I was asked so many times to bring the toys back next week, I guess they will be living in my bag from now on!

08/09/2023

We’re back! 🥳🥳🥳

Well, we’ve not actually been away, we’ve just been busy helping lots of children with their speech and language therapy and haven’t had time for social media too.

Our wonderful team continues to grow and we are able to help children with a wide variety of communication difficulties.

Here’s an example of a simple but effective activity to help with speech sounds from earlier in the week. Under each brick is a child’s target picture. The more words they uncover and say, the taller they can build their tower. This is usually an easy one to replicate at home too.

I also use my trusty abacus to count target trials and see how close to 100 we can get!

What would you like to see from our page here? Let us know all your speech therapy questions, whether you’re a therapist yourself, a parent or working with children.

18/05/2023

One of my lovely families attended Mikey's Wish - Verbal Dyspraxia Awareness fantastic conference last weekend and got me this sweet little badge to raise awareness of Verbal Dyspraxia (CAS). I’ve attached it to my lanyard and will wear it with pride. Well done Mikey on what sounded like an amazing day 🎉

04/04/2023

It upsets me to think of the service I was proud to work for 10 years ago, and how different things look for children in 2023. It wasn’t perfect but it worked - the children who needed help the most received it.

Our current private caseload is full of children with enormous levels of need, most of whom are sat on an NHS waiting list having never been seen at all, and we are turning away countless families each week because we are at capacity. Something must change to give our children the support they deserve.

22/03/2023

Please consider signing this petition regarding SEND services in Hertfordshire. Sadly we are seeing first hand the impacts that lack of funding to the service is having on children with additional needs:

Urgent investment in the SEND service within Hertfordshire Local Authority

13/03/2023

Here today with a little public service announcement: If your child has a speech and language delay, please have their hearing checked!

Of course, not every child with speech sound difficulties has a hearing impairment! However, sometimes, it can be a huge piece of the puzzle. Let me tell you about H...

H is now 4 years old and has been on my caseload for 15 months. He had a history of glue ear (a build-up of fluid in the middle ear, which can cause hearing loss) and had previously had grommets fitted. It was thought that this had resolved the issue.

When I met him at 3 years old, he had only 1-2 words and was showing outward signs of frustration at not being able to communicate. As words began to emerge they were extremely unclear. He was displaying many of the indicators of Childhood Apraxia of Speech - a very limited repertoire of sounds, vowel distortions, use of non-English sounds, inconsistencies and limited prosody. We worked with CAS approaches and he made progress, but it was slow. Three months ago, a follow-up hearing test revealed that his severe glue ear was back. He underwent a second procedure to fit grommets again.

The progress he has made in the last 3 months since the grommets were fitted has blown me away. His speech has gone from almost unintelligible to verging on age-appropriate. Once he was able to hear more clearly, the effectiveness of therapy skyrocketed. Suddenly he could hear me clearly! The biggest impact for his family has been his mood and behaviour - now that he can explain what he wants and how he feels, he is like a different child.

So when it comes to hearing - if in doubt, rule it out!

Picture credit: ent4kids.co.uk