Speech and language therapy service in Cramlington celebrates its successful first year

The organisation works with primary school aged children, typically under five, with a range of speech, language, or communication difficulties.

It was founded by Julie Cota and has since grown to have eight members of staff, consisting of two more speech and language therapists, an assistant, and a reception team.

Julie said: “Every day is very different. Children are different and it is just lovely supporting their overall communication skills, being able to support them to do things that they were not able to do previously.”

An event was held to mark the anniversary, and was attended by Blyth Valley MP Ian Levy and representatives from Cramlington Town Council.

A team from The Toby Henderson Trust, a charity supporting children with autism that Julie has worked with before, also attended, as did some of the families that use Speech Stuff’s services.

Julie, who lives in Choppington, said: “It was nice to have that opportunity for parents to come along in a more social capacity last week, and the parents got a lot from that. That was really nice.”

The 34-year-old “always knew that [she] wanted to help children in some capacity” and became a speech and language therapist after studying the subject at university.

Julie had some language support herself as a child, and is not surprised at the growing demand for Speech Stuff’s help.

Julie said: “Certainly there is a high need for speech and language therapy services at the moment. As a profession we are on the shortage list because there is such a high demand for those services.

“And obviously, there is a lot of waiting time [issues] in the NHS. We like to supplement that so that parents can get support in addition to what they are getting from the NHS services.”

Speech Stuff also runs parent workshops, training in schools and free advice sessions on top of individual appointments.

Julie said: “Obviously parents are very involved in the service so it is very much working together with the parents to support the children. It is really a nice way of working.”