Ali Hay - Speech & Language Therapist

12/07/2026

Love her or loathe her, Peppa Pig is a firm favourite in many of my child-led sessions. Here are some of the ways I use Peppa to enhance my therapy:

🐷 Connecting with children over a shared interest (ok I maybe have to fake my interest a little!)
🐷 Child-led play, narrating how the child is playing and modelling simple language as they play.
🐷 Symbolic sounds - using animal noises, enviromental noises and onomatopoeia (‘wheeeee’) to encourage early meaningful vocalisations.
🐷 Colourful Semantics - using the characters to support children who are learning to build sentences.
🐷 Teaching concepts - moving the characters to be ‘in front of’, ‘behind’, ‘under’, ‘next to’ other play items.
🐷 Modelling language for gestalt language processors through acting out familiar routines and play scenarios.

I’m always adding to my Peppa collection because it just does not seem to age. It’s a definite keeper!

10/07/2026

This heat is too much for some of my children 🥵. Thank goodness for our Assistive Technology which allows them to communicate their needs and feeling when it all gets overwhelming. Today, J was really struggling with the heat. He couldn’t settle to anything and he was becoming frustrated.

How wonderful that he was able to use his talker to navigate to the “I need to tell you…” page, and then select the “I need a rest” button. I was then able to offer him a comfy beanbag to lie on, with the fan blowing on him, while I massaged his feet with a textured rolling pin (I know, pampered!!). He calmed right down and was then able to engage in some learning activities later on in the session.

Regulation is critical to any learning environment. If a child is not regulated, they will not learn. Simple. In my sessions, I will do whatever it takes to support a child’s regulation…even foot massages 🤣

03/07/2026

Really looking forward to this! I absolutely love all things AAC so to have the chance to further my knowledge and expertise in this area is really exciting!!

27/06/2026

For children struggling in mainstream school, excluded, part of an EOTAS package or home educated. See our website "Whats On" section to register your interest. We'd love to see you!

27/06/2026

Are you the parent of a child who is falling through gaps in educational provision? Take a look at Havenswood Safe Spaces!

20/06/2026

What a lovely surprise I had today. A friend of mine happened to meet someone completely by chance at a charity event, and they got chatting. In the course of conversation, speech therapy was brought up and my friend mentioned my name. The lady he was speaking to then wrote this note and asked for it to be passed on to me. I remember this child well, he is a young adult now and it sounds as if he is absolutely thriving.

It is such an amazing feeling to know that I had some small impact on his early journey through hearing loss and communication development. I love to hear how my past clients are doing and I am in touch with a few of them and their families. I’ve worked with so many children since I qualified 25 years ago and it’s always lovely to know how they are getting on and what they are doing in life 💜

09/06/2026

My brother Sam Whitley created this poster as part of his teacher training to become a high school teacher, and I’m honestly so proud of him. 💜

He chose to focus on Developmental Language Disorder because teens with DLD are still so often misunderstood and awareness in schools is still so low!

DLD does not disappear when children get older. In high school, it can show up in ways that are easy to misread: trouble following complex directions, difficulty keeping up with fast conversations, anxiety when speaking in class, challenges with reading comprehension, struggles with word problems, or difficulty organizing written work.

But this poster does something really important.

It does not just show the challenges. It shows strategies.

Breaking information into chunks. Asking for repetition. Using cue cards. Highlighting key ideas. Making outlines. Checking writing with a list. Asking what someone meant.

These are not “extra help” strategies. These are access strategies.

When students understand their own needs, and when teachers understand what DLD can look like, we create classrooms where students are less likely to be labelled as careless, quiet, lazy, rude, or not trying.

Awareness matters because understanding changes the support.

And teens with DLD deserve recognition, respect, and practical tools that help them participate more fully in school and daily life.

So proud of you, Sam, and so glad future high school students will have teachers who are learning to see beneath the surface. 💜

Note: There is a PDF version in the files section of our private group (free to join) called Developmental Language Disorder Community

31/05/2026

29/05/2026

Finishing the day off with some tin can target practice!! Practising speech sounds is boooooring! 🥱

So we like to switch things up a bit and make it into a game. We tried using the ball poppers but they didn’t do the trick so we got the beanbags out to knock those cans over and say the words that were attached to each one.

29/05/2026

A lovely session of modelling AAC with a little boy today. He has a current interest in numbers so while he was exploring, matching and sorting, I modelled the language on our Talker, on which I have set up a page for numbers 1-10.

There was no requirement for him to imitate me or press the buttons for himself, but he engaged, he showed an interest and he watched what I was doing.

Modelling is an essential step in the AAC journey. It doesn’t take any effort, you simply press the buttons that represent what the child is doing in the moment, to add language to their play.

Whether a child has a paper-based communication system or an electronic device, it is crucial that they are exposed to modelling ALL THE TIME!!