Red flags for speech impairment: who should we refer to speech therapy?

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Speech disorders are a common presenting concern to paediatricians. Yet evidence to guide detection and speech sound therapy referral of cases at risk for persistent speech disorder is limited, with no normative English speech data published for over two decades. Here we describe speech development in a large, contemporaneous normative sample, to help clinicians identify errors of disordered speech from developmental errors (which are of lesser concern). We also examine differences in speech development over 20 years. METHODS: Children aged 2 years 0 months-12 years 11 months were recruited from 24 sites (9 schools, 15 childcare/kindergarten settings) from New South..