• 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).

She is chairperson of the Independent Speech-Language Therapists of Ireland (ISTI).