Alison Grantham, Head Teacher, Maybury Primary School:

"We cannot praise the work of Bridge Speech and Language Therapy Services highly enough. They have been instrumental in supporting us to raise standards in our school.

Maybury Primary is a school in an area of high social deprivation. We have high aspirations for all our children and work hard to remove significant barriers to learning. However, until beginning work with Bridge SLT, we did not have the appropriate skills, or the access to appropriate support, to tackle our children’s speech and language issues nor to provide the language acquisition support that many of our children needed.

Since beginning work with us in 2014, Bridge SLT have worked as professional partners to create and deliver a bespoke package of support that truly meets the needs of our children. As well as giving individual and group therapy on a weekly basis, they train and work with our staff ensuring that the intervention work with the children happens in school on a daily basis. This ongoing CPD has been invaluable in developing the understanding and skills of our teachers and teaching assistants and the impact has been significant for the development of our children.

We have seen improved outcomes in the number of children achieving the early learning goal in Communication and Language at the end of the Foundation Stage, which has impacted effectively on their progress across all areas of learning. Higher up the school, careful tracking shows us that the work provided by Bridge SLT has contributed to greater rates of progress and improved attainment across the curriculum for the children targeted for support.

Bridge SLT are now an integral part of our school provision and we would recommend the service without reservation."

Anna Howard (SENCO):

"Bridge SLT Ltd has been an invaluable service to our school. The support, expertise and advice has ensured that all pupils working with the service have made remarkable progress with both their speech and language development. Bridge SLT have always been a phone call or email away and have responded to requests for support and advice promptly. The weekly 1:1 sessions working with the pupils and TA's have shown how small manageable steps repeated regularly can make a massive impact. Bridge SLT have also worked alongside parents to provide them with ideas, support, advice and guidance on how best to encourage their child's speech and language development.

Without this service our children, especially within the early years, would not be showing as much progress and the gap between themselves and their peers would be continuing to widen. We have been fortunate to have had 'quality' staff development training; ensuring that all Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 teachers, TAs and the SEND team have been trained in delivering whole class and group support for language and speech. The training provided on a weekly basis for TA's working 1:1 with pupils has not only up-skilled our staff but also given them the confidence to support pupils. Bridge SLT is a fantastic service for schools, individual pupils and parents."

Kayleigh Stonehouse, EYFS Teacher:

"The Phonological Awareness training delivered to me by Ann and Lynne has given me the tools I need to become a better, more confident teacher. The training has not only improved my phonics teaching ability but has also allowed me to become confident in identifying children’s specific needs when they are faced with speech and language difficulties. I have been able to share the training with my colleagues and it is clear to see that the children are already benefiting from the planning and teaching that they are receiving, across the EYFS and into Key Stage 1. The easy to follow programme is now crucial in our teaching, and I think all staff who have been lucky enough to receive this training would agree. I cannot thank Helen Stringer and Bridge SLT enough for their encouragement and continued support."