Speech and language therapy for children

Two consulting rooms in Cape Town — Durbanville and Kenilworth. Screenings, assessments and ten-week therapy blocks for children from eighteen months to Grade 7.

Book a screening

Not every late talker needs therapy. Some do.

Klank is a paediatric speech-language practice. We watch your child, we tell you plainly whether therapy is needed, and if it is we work in blocks with you in the room. If it is not, we say that too and send you home without an invoice.

What we help with

Four things parents phone us about. If what you have noticed is not on this list, phone anyway — we will tell you whether it is ours to fix.

Late talkers

A two-year-old with fewer than fifty words, or a three-year-old only the family can understand. We check the hearing first, then the play, then the words — in that order — because it is usually not the order parents expect.

Stammering

Blocks, repetitions and the tension that arrives with them. Most children who start stammering before four grow out of it on their own. The ones who do not need help early, so we would rather see you at three and be wrong.

Sound errors

The r that comes out as a w, the s that whistles, the five-year-old still saying "tat" for "cat". Sounds come right in a fixed order and we work them in that order, with a five-minute list to take home — not a pack of worksheets.

School readiness

Following a two-step instruction, telling a story so it makes sense, rhyming, hearing the first sound in a word. Grade R teachers flag these in the third term. We would far rather look at them in the first.

How a session actually goes

A session is forty-five minutes and most of it looks like playing, because for a four-year-old playing is the only thing that works. There is a mat, a box of things she chose herself, and a therapist quietly putting the target sound in front of her until it stops being difficult. You sit in the room. Not behind glass and not in the waiting area — on the mat, because you are the one who does this at home for the other six days of the week, and you cannot copy something you have never watched. ✓ The parent stays in the room, every single session ✓ Forty-five minutes, same day and same time for the whole block ✓ Home activities that take five minutes, not an hour ✓ Written progress notes at the end of every ten-week block

How a block works

Screening20 minutes · no charge

Assessment90 minutes · written report

Therapy blockTen weeks · once a week

ReviewCarry on, or stop here

Medical aid

We are not contracted to any scheme, so you settle with us and we hand you an invoice carrying the practice number and the diagnosis codes. Most schemes pay a portion of that back from a speech therapy or an allied-health benefit, and a few pay all of it. Phone your scheme before the assessment rather than after it, and ask them one question: how many speech therapy sessions a year does this plan cover, and does it come out of savings.

Waiting times

Screenings usually go in the same week, sometimes the same day if someone cancels. An assessment slot in Durbanville runs about two to three weeks out; Kenilworth is a little longer in term time and much shorter over the June holidays. Blocks start on the first Monday after the assessment if there is a slot. If there is not, we tell you the date instead of putting you on a list you never hear about again.

Talking to the school

With your written permission we phone the class teacher, and where it will help we come in and watch a morning. Teachers see the things we never will — who your child talks to at break, whether an instruction lands the first time or the third, what happens when the noise goes up. It costs you nothing extra and it changes what we work on more often than the assessment does.

Parents say

Ruan was three and a half and I was the only person who understood him. Six months later his Grade R teacher phoned to say she had no idea he had ever been in therapy.

Marissa du Toit · Durbanville

What I did not expect was being sent home after the screening. Give it four months, they said, come back if nothing shifts. Nothing was charged and he caught up on his own.

Thabo Mokoena · Kenilworth

My daughter stammered badly at five and I had been told to ignore it. The block gave her something to do when she got stuck, and gave me something to say instead of finishing her sentence.

Zainab Ismail · Rondebosch

Durbanville

12 Wellington Road, Durbanville 7550 First floor, Oxford Centre · parking off Kruis Street

Monday to Thursday 08:00–16:30 Friday 08:00–13:00

021 976 3308

Kenilworth

Rooms 4 and 5, 88 Kenilworth Road, Kenilworth 7708 Ground floor, entrance off the courtyard · ramp at the gate

Tuesday to Friday 08:30–17:00 Saturday mornings 08:30–12:00

021 671 2245

The screening takes twenty minutes and costs nothing.

It is not an assessment and it is not therapy. It is us watching your child play for twenty minutes and telling you honestly whether you need us at all.

Book a screening

Twenty minutes, no charge, and you leave knowing whether therapy is even needed. We phone back within one working day with two times to choose from.