Speech skills are conceptualised as a “brick wall”, with the foundations being single consonant and vowel sounds, with accurate production being supported by speech motor skills.

Simple and more complex word level skills are then built up in layers of bricks on top of the foundations. Simple CV and VC syllables are the first layer, moving up in layers through CVCV, CVC, CVCVC and multi-syllabic words, clusters, word combinations of phrases and sentences and finally reaching the top layer of connected speech.

The brick wall: NDP3 focuses on establishing (as fully as possible) a set of motor programs at each level of the wall, as well as supporting the development of a full range of psycholinguistic processing skills.

The approach provides a multi-layered, multi-target treatment approach involving working on several layers at the same time (e.g. single sounds, CV word level and CVCV word level), but with different targets at each level.

The approach works from the child’s strengths: what he can already do and builds skills in small achievable steps from this point.

It is a cumulative approach in that practice exercises from the early stages continue to be included in the therapy programme as the child moves up the layers.