Why is MISLToe_SSD important?

Children with speech sound disorder (SSD) find it difficult making some of their speech sounds clearly, which can make it hard for family and friends to understand them. In some cases, there is a clear reason for why this happens, such as a cleft palate, cerebral palsy, or hearing loss. However, in most cases, we are not quite sure why it happens. If it is not treated early, SSD could have a lasting impact on their education, job prospects and mental well-being.

Speech Sound Disorder (SSD) affects around 3-4% of children
between the ages 4 and 8.

Early intervention, where a child receives therapy at an early stage for their SSD, can really make a difference for a child’s life. However, most of what we know about speech and language therapy comes from research studies, where resources may be ideal and unlimited.
In practice, speech and language therapy services for children with SSD can be quite different across the UK because these clinics often do not have enough resources to carry out therapies exactly the way that research does.

This makes it difficult to gather data from clinics across the UK to figure out which therapies and methods work best for children that are accessing speech and language therapy services in real life.

MISLToe_SSD aims to address the above issue by finding out which therapies work best in real-word clinical settings for children with different types of SSD by:

• Establishing a shared process between Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) across participating NHS services in collecting regular clinical information about children with SSD before and after therapy
• Combining the information collected from these participating NHS services
• Using the combined information to identify which therapy methods work best for children with different types of SSDs in real-world SLT services