We work with a range of conditions, including:
- Acquired communication difficulties.
- Swallowing problems.
- Stammering difficulties.
We provide many of our services to patients after they have experienced a sudden neurological impairment or have been diagnosed with a progressive neurological condition.
People with voice disorders, and head, neck or throat cancer are dealt with by the ENT speech and language therapy service.
Conditions we treat
Some of the main disorders we work with are:
- Stroke
- Dementia
- Parkinson’s Disease and Parkinsonian syndromes
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Respiratory Conditions (including COVID-19)
- Head Injury
- Brain Tumour
- Huntington’s Disease
- Motor Neurone Disease
- Stammering
Our aim is to give you a continuous service throughout your time in hospital and then follow up your treatment at home or in a nursing home. We provide intensive community treatments for aphasia, and also offer patients the chance to get involved in group therapy. Our team also provide intensive ‘Lee Silverman Treatment’ for Parkinson’s Disease, which achieves significant results for some patients.
As well as this we also offer one-to-one therapies, and a friendly support group for stammering.
In our hospitals, we use videofluoroscopy and fibreoptic endoscopy (FEES) to accurately assess swallowing problems.
Highly skilled team
Our adult speech and language therapy team helps with people at all stages of their condition.
Therapists are based at the RVI, Freeman Hospital, and at Denton Park Health Centre.
We are involved in research programmes and often look to recruit people, especially those with aphasia, to receive specific treatment as part of a controlled research project. This helps us to understand which treatments work best.
How to access our services
In-patients are referred from the hospital ward team.
Patients can be referred to our community service from any healthcare professional and patients, or their carer/members of their family, can refer themselves.
Adult speech and language therapy community referral formMore information
You can see more details about stammering in adults here
You can get more details about videofluoroscopy here
For nursing home staff managing patient with dysphagia see our dysphagia resource pack
Dysphagia resource packPlease note:
- Some of the links on this page launch PDF documents which may take some time to download.
- If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please contact us to tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.
Further information
Community Service – 0191 2138841
RVI – 0191 282 4324
Freeman Hospital – 0191 2138270
Freeman Ward 9 (stroke ward) – 0191 2123575
Email: J.Appleton2@nhs.net
