Nicola Lathey on Speech and Language

Nicola Lathey is one of the top Speech and Language Therapists in the UK. She is the author of the prize-winning book, Small Talk, and has also written a series of children’s books, underpinned by Speech and Language Therapy principles.

Nicola’s decision to train as a Speech and Language Therapist centred on the fact that she has a younger brother with Down’s Syndrome, who needed Speech and Language Therapy support when he was young. She has direct personal experience of the effects that speech and language problems can have on children and on their families.

Nicola qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist in 1999, graduating from University College London, and worked for the NHS and abroad from then until 2011 when she set up the first Owl Centre in Oxford.

In this interview, she discusses stammering, stuttering or speech dysfluency and some ideas for practitioners and educators to help children, such as having a ‘special talk time’ every day, not drawing attention to the stammer or stutter and slowing down your own rate of talking too.

Nicola has some great ideas for both daily activities and long-term strategies for supporting children with their speech and language and also explains the theory of the language pyramid.

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