Inclusive Communication has been providing speech-language therapy, AAC (alternative and augmentative communication for people who can't rely on speech to meet their daily needs), and autism support in the Greater Wellington region since 2014.

Our expertise

We specialise in Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), Autism, neurodiversity, literacy development, and language disorders. Many of our clients are able to vocalize or speak some words, however at Inclusive Communication the ability to speak is not a prerequisite for speech-language therapy.

We also support people with strong verbal skills who are finding social interactions or high level language skills difficult. This often comes into play when people are finding it difficult to access other services due to communication challenges.

How we work

Our services typically incorporate family, friends, siblings, teachers and co-workers to ensure that everyone feels comfortable communicating with and supporting people who have speech and language challenges, however at the heart of our service are the needs and wishes of the person experiencing communication challenges.

• We are patient and family-centred
• We are evidence-based
• We support the neurodiversity movement
• We come to your home, school, or other location that meets your needs

Professional development

We specialise in providing training and professional development for a wide range of audiences including:

• Education teams, including teaching assistants, who are keen to take the next step in supporting tamariki with language, communication, and literacy challenges
• Businesses looking to improve communication access for customers and on their teams
• Mental health clinicians looking to strength their abilities to work effectively with neurodivergent clients and clients with communication challenges.

We also have years of experience in helping nuerotypical people better understand the lived experience and needs of neurodivergent children and adults.

Ondemand webinars

We offer a selection of our professional development webinars for a nominal fee that can be booked at any time from our Humanitix site: https://events.humanitix.com/host/inclusive-communication Currently we have the following ondemand webinars available:

• Developing language in everyday moments
• Social communication underpinnings to "behaviour"
• Anxiety, Language and Communication

Clinical Services

We support people of all ages with autism, Down Syndrome, language disorders, intellectual disabilities and other conditions impacting on language, literacy and/or speech. We specialise in supporting families who are wondering if their child might have autism or might need AAC. Much of our work is with children before they enter school and teenagers. That said, we are open to working with primary-school children if their school is open to collaboration.

Individual speech-language therapy

We have an extensive waitlist for assessments, consultations, and individual therapy sessions: active waitlist We offer single consultation appointments to people on the waitlist when availability allows, including cancellation.

CAT 1 - assisitve technology assessments

We are able to provide privately-funded assessments for AAC (Augmentative and Alternative communication). If an appropriate solution is found, we can submit CAT-1 level funding applications to Enable (subsidiary of Health New Zealand - Te Whatu Ora) for publicly funded equipment (funds managed by Whaikaha and MSD)

Alternatively, you can self-refer to TalkLink for a publicly funded assessment for a publicly funded assessment (there is a wait).

Mental health

We collaborate with mental health professionals around supporting the language and communication needs of teenagers and adults with autism, language disorders and other communication needs.

All are welcome to contact us to see if our expertise could assist with your unique situation.