Sumera Khan completed a BSc (Hons) in Clinical Communication Sciences and qualified as a Speech & Language Therapist from the Central School of Speech & Drama in 1998. She has been working in various NHS trusts since then and in private practice since 2018. She has been providing Speech and Language Therapy for a range of complex communication needs in clinics, nurseries, clients’ homes, children centres, mainstream, specialist, and independent schools.
Ms Khan has extensive experience in training parents, carers, and educational staff key strategies within their home and educational settings, utilising everyday routines to help children achieve realistic communication goals. She passionately believes in this naturalistic approach, prioritising teaching children the functional communication skills needed for their daily routines first and foremost, so they gain confidence in familiar environments and feel ready to practice their newly acquired/improved skills in the wider settings.
Ms Khan has worked as part of multi-disciplinary diagnostic ASD clinics in the NHS for over 15 years, providing a high quality service with all aspects of identification, diagnosis and therapeutic support for autistic children and their families. Her special interests are in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), social communication differences and Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Her career has given her extensive experience in working with younger children from age 15 months old to 5 years, but she also has wide ranging experience with school aged children providing assessment, advice, and therapy.
Ms Khan’s approach involves fully engaging everyone around the child involved in facilitating communication development through implementing ‘total communication’ strategies throughout the day with the parents and education staff as the experts in the child and the therapist as the facilitator for the positive change to occur.