National survey of children aged 8-18 years with persisting communication problems associated with cleft palate

Abstract

A national postal survey was sent to all speech and language therapy managers/directors in England and Wales (n =206), to identify individuals aged 8-18 years with a cleft palate, who have persisting communication difficul-ties. Twelve of the 303 young people identified in the survey were studied further through a residential intervention programme (July 1999). The findings have far-reaching implications for all involved in the management of these children/adolescents’ psychosocial welfare, especially the Cleft Palate Team and those responsible for their education. [The term ‘cleft palate’ incorporates those with cleft lip and palate and non-cleft velopharyngeal incompetence (VPI).]

Expressive language skills in Chinese Singaporean preschoolers with nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate

“…The finding that there was a higher prevalence of language difficulties in Chinese Singaporean preschoolers with CLP was in accordance with previous studies of other ethnic groups [31][32][33]35,36]. However, the aetiologies of language impairment in the nonsyndromic CLP population remain diverse and inconclusive.…”

“…Available research provides prevalence estimates of expressive language impairment of 18-27% for non-Asian children with CLP [31,32,35,36]. These published figures illustrate that children with CLP are at risk for language impairment several times higher than what is expected for the general population of 2.6-8.4% [37][38][39].…”

“…Vallino et al (2008) documented 18% of 95 three-year-old preschoolers from Canada with isolated cleft lip to have an expressive language impairment based on The Preschool Language Scale-2 [34,35]. Furthermore, in the UK, a nationwide survey of speech pathologists across England and Wales indicated that 27% of children with CLP aged 8-18 years were experiencing persisting language difficulties [36].…”

You Talk Like a Monkey: Reflections on a Teacher's Personal Study of Growing Up with a Cleft Palate

“…Some young people feel that not enough attention is paid to issues that concern them specifically ( Owen, Hayett and Roulstone, 2004). The attention paid in the literature to relationships and the agency of the child or 'patient' (Nash, Stengelhofen, Toombs, Brown and Kellow, 2001b;Patel and Ross, 2003;Lockhart, 2003;Weiss, 2004;Lovegrove and Rumsey, 2005) is far outweighed by structural and clinical aspects of the condition.…”

“…Here, a holistic paradigm is adopted to address adolescents' problems with communication and to design strategies for enhancing communication in groups with other young people with clefts. The programme promotes the value of intensive individual and group work for specific speech difficulties and as a way to boost social competence within a supportive environment, and enable the child to cope effectively (Nash et al, 2001b). Adolescent peer relationships are characterized by crowds, which have social functions, including socialization into heterosexual interests and behaviour, and strengthening constructs of personality and identity (Skoe and von der Lippe, 1998).…”