Communication at the heart of unique preschool

Lifestyle – Keith Kelly hears about a special facility that’s helping young children with speech problems

The former Mother Hubbards premises snuggled in Moyvilla between Craughwell and Oranmore was once a thriving restaurant, catering for some of the thousands of motorists who travelled daily on the old N6 between Galway and Dublin before the new motorway opened.

With the drop-off in traffic, the restaurant closed its doors but for the past eight years it has been given a new lease of life as the home to the Children’s Language Development Preschool (CLDP) which opened in 2008 and provides children of preschool age with speech and language therapy and support to help them communicate.

The school is run by Joan O’Connor and has a staff of five teachers which caters for up to 15 children at a time, a ratio which Joan says is ideal for supporting the children who attend, but at the same time it means that there is a waiting list for the facility’s services.

“We tend to take smaller groups of children and more staff, at the moment we would have seven children with two teachers, we deal with smaller ratios.

“Sometimes a child might come for three months, say, and they will get enough out of it that they can go back to their local preschools; some may stay for a year, a year and a half, two years – it can depend on a child’s needs, or their age,” explains Joan.

The school opened in 2008 when the husband-and-wife team that was already operating four schools in Dublin decided to look outside the M50 ring for a location for a fifth, but it has been far from plain sailing.

“The company went into liquidation not long after we opened. We had renovated this place, we had it done up and had a fantastic group of parents and kids, were making lots of progress and were told in July with a phone call from Dublin we were closing down,” Joan recalls.

“We had a lot of kids booked in for September, so over the summer myself, a couple of teachers and a group of parents set up the school, set it up as non-profit-making organisation with charity status. We opened the doors on September 1, all those children came back and we have been open since,” she explains.

The school is set up as a preschool for children with language and communication difficulties. It caters for children with a diagnosis as well as those whose parents feel are not progressing as they should with their language.

“We are a pretty unique service – if a child has a specific diagnosis, such as autism or Down syndrome, we take those children, as the common problem is language, communication,” says Joan.

“There are services for children with autism, with Down syndrome, but it is the other children that don’t fit in those boxes that often finds a problem with locating services. The parent might feel a child is not talking as they should be and there is a delay in their speech development, so they will turn to us.

“In that case, what can happen is they start with us from the age of two upwards, knowing there may be an issue, and we encourage them to go to the HSE and get assessed. All of that can be happening in the background while they are here and we are working with them while sometimes they are trying to figure out what is going on.

“We have a speech therapist that comes in every month, we have an occupational therapist and behavioural analyst so we get the support as teachers, so if we have concerns about speech, we have our own ST and assess the children ourselves.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.