What is it?

Dysarthria is a speech disorder in which the muscles used to produce speech are damaged, paralysed or weakened. This can make it harder to produce specific sounds and your child’s speech may be slurred or harder to understand.

How does it affect children?

A child with dysarthria may have:

• Slurred, nasal sounding or breathy speech.
• A strained and hoarse voice.
• Very loud or quiet speech.
• Problems speaking in a regular rhythm, with frequent hesitations.
• Gurgly or monotone speech.
• Difficulty with tongue and lip movements.
• Difficulty swallowing which may lead to constant drooling.

Depending on their individual needs, a child with dysarthria may be difficult to understand. Dysarthria can affect children to different extents. Some can speak well with support, while others can only easily produce short phrases or single words. Other children may find it very difficult to produce any intelligible speech and will benefit from devices to support their speech.

What causes Dysarthria?

Dysarthria is caused by muscle weakness due to damage to either the brain or nervous system which control them. There are two main forms of dysarthria:

Developmental

This is when brain damage occurs before or during birth such as in children with cerebral palsy.

Acquired

In acquired dysarthria the brain damage occurs later in life, such as from a stroke, severe head injury or brain tumour. This is rare in children.

Supporting children with Dysarthria

Depending on your child’s needs, our service may support them to develop a range of skills such as producing speech sounds or supporting swallowing difficulties. We may work as part of a team alongside other professionals to create an integrated therapy plan for your child. As each child with dysarthria is unique their treatment will depend on individual needs and they may require different levels and kinds of support at different ages.

We will try to improve and maximise your child’s ability to talk, and may recommend:

• Strategies to improve speech, such as slowing speech down.
• Exercises to improve the volume or clarity of speech .
• Assistive devices, such as a simple alphabet board, an amplifier, or a computerised voice output system (also known as AAC).