Marijke Morris
Education
Notable awards
Profile
Marijke set up CATTS (Clinical Assessment Therapy & Training Services) in 2009 so that she could help people access speech and language therapy without long waiting lists. CATTS is a family-run practice and the whole family is involved in creating videos and training for families to use. CATTS was the winner of the Irish Enterprise Awards 2018 for Best Speech & Language Therapy Service. Marijke loves helping families reduce children’s frustration, to make learning fun and to relieve parents’ anxiety about their child’s speech and language skills. She also likes helping adults who has voice difficulties, which impacts on their work. Marijke has over 20 years’ experience but feel like she is still learning every day. She qualified and worked in South Africa before moving to Ireland in 2001. Her degree also includes qualification as an Audiologist. Her experience includes working as part of multidisciplinary teams in general Private Practice, Intellectual Disability, Visual Impairment and Autistic Spectrum Disorder, with a wide variety of ages and disorders. As well as extensive direct clinical experience in Early Intervention, management and supervision, she provides SLT supervision and mentoring to other therapists. Follow CATTS on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram for handy (and quirky) tips on how to help your child to communicate. Warning: cat videos may occasionally pop up!
Courses
If you are a parent of a child who is learning how to speak you will get the most out of this talk.
Presented by CATTS Online Speech and Language Therapist, Marijke, this one hour course covers the following areas:
What do children learn from play?
Tips to use in Play
Creating Communication Opportunities
Types of Play
Toys to help language development
What to Avoid
Choosing Toys
This short course is FREE.
Grab a coffee… and press ‘Play’! 🙂
Stuttering, or stammering can profoundly affect an individual. There are ways you can practically help.
This short talk is aimed at families and anyone who is caring for or working with a child with a stutter.
If you are waiting for an appointment with one of the CATTS Online Speech Therapists to assist with your child’s stutter, this course will help you know how to support and help them in the interim.
What is Attention, and how can we help kids ‘tune in’?
Being able to successfully communicate the source of, and even cause of, pain is vitally important in a young child or a person with communication issues.
Short overview about behaviour.
This topic comes up a lot in requests from parents, teachers and carers alike.
After this course, you may wish to take:
A social story is a great tool to help manage expectations, which can often lead to a reduction in what is often termed ‘Problem behaviour’.
Speech and Language Therapist Marijke Morris outlines what Communication Passports are, how to create them, and why you always need them for children and adolescents with communication difficulties.
If there is ever a ‘Silver Bullet’ item, when done well, that can help family members, teachers, SNAs and carers to work together to ensure a child is given the best chance – this is it.
It is best to have your child’s teacher or SNA’s help with creating these.
This short course is FREE.
Children with communication difficulties need extra practice. Typical kids need hundreds of repetitions of a word to learn a word (except for swear words) and kids with communication difficulties often need more than that.
When you create communication opportunities, you make sure that your child practices their communication skills. And as we all know, practice makes perfect!
The techniques in this course are the foundation skills needed to ensure your child gets the best consistent opportunities to communicate and learn.
Think of it like watching a game of football. ‘All’ that the player really does is repeat the same core skills over and over again during the duration of the game, long kicks, dribbling, heading the ball, etc. How well the player practices each individual skill and learns to combine them makes the difference.
It is the same with assisting a child to encourage communication – whether that child is pre-verbal or at any stage of language development. Each video snippet of the techniques are designed to be viewed frequently by you, or those with whom your child regularly interacts with, grandparents, childminders, older siblings etc.
Here are 5 things you can do to help your child communicate.
There are some common things which every parent goes through when they suspect, or are informed that their child has a communication difficulty.
Parents:
This short talk does not seek to tell or suggest to avoid them, it does however outline what they are, so that you know that it isn’t just you, all parents have gone through some or all of these to a lesser or greater degree. Once you are aware, you are better able to deal with them and help your child.
SNAs / Teachers / Therapists:
Knowing and being aware of the concerns and issues a parent may have helps you to better help them.
Please take the 15 minutes to view this talk.
Remember: For you, it may be say, a Tuesday afternoon; for the parent you are speaking to, that day may go down in their family history as the time they were informed of a concern, or a diagnosis – or the day their child had an amazing breakthrough!
All upcoming Lámh courses with CATTS.
Please click on the ‘Take This Course’ button below to see a list of upcoming dates.
- This presentation is aimed at parents of young children and will offer tips for early language development.
This is a general talk designed to provide information on language development in young children.
It is not focused on children with specific or additional needs, but information is provided on when to be concerned about your child’s speech and language development.
Your Instructor

Marijke is the Lead Clinician for CATTS. She has more than 19 years experience in Speech and Language Therapy.
She qualified and worked in South Africa before moving to Ireland in 2001. Her degree also includes qualification as an Audiologist. She founded CATTS in late 2009 after several years with the HSE.
Her experience includes working as part of multidisciplinary teams in general Private Practice, Intellectual Disability, Visual Impairment and Autistic Spectrum Disorder, with a wide variety of ages and disorders.
As well as extensive direct clinical experience in Early Intervention, management and supervision, she provides SLT supervision and mentoring to other therapists.
Marijke also has experience in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), including Lamh (signing), the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) and high tech communication devices. Marijke is trained in the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), which assesses social and communicative behaviour associated with autism.
Marijke is certified to present the Hanen parent training programmes It Takes Two to Talk, More Than Words and TalkAbility. She is also a certified Lamh tutor.
She has a special interest in paediatric Speech & Language Therapy, food aversion and professional development. Marijke is registered with the Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists (IASLT) and the International Association of Logopedics and Phonetica (IALP).
The first module of the talk is below. Remaining modules can be accessed for free under the Course Content section below.
How to create, and use visuals PROPERLY to help the child in your class, person in your service, or loved one at home, communicate with others – AND reduce anxiety and frustration. (For everyone!)
This course which is created and delivered by a Senior Speech & Language Therapist (SLP in the USA) covers the steps required to create and support someone who cannot speak for themselves, by using Visual aids.
This course will be of benefit to:
Special Needs Assistants, Special Education Teachers, or Class Teachers who have people in their class who have communication difficulties.
Family members and carers of people with non-verbal communication needs
Nurses and Professional Care staff who wish to support patients in their care
Lets talk about emotional regulation. We all need it. How do you encourage it with someone who has difficulties?
This overview of AAC devices will help you learn the differnt types of systems.
You will learn about the pros and cons to both the Light and High tech systems.
You will learn that no one system may suit, and to realise the importance of the student’s autonomy.
You will also cover the considerations that should be used for ACC.
It will also give pointers on how you can help and assist an individual who is learning to use their AAC device.
This training course will cover:
• What is Down Syndrome
• The scope and range of Down Syndrome
• Co-morbidity and what it means
• Early intervention
• Typical accommodations to support a pupil with Down Syndrome school
• Techniques that help generally
The 101 courses are designed to give an overview of the topic, and will give pointers and links to follow on courses that can deep dive more into tips or techniques to assist and help.