StoryFrames

Cynthia Pelman is a speech and language therapist working with children who struggle to communicate due to speech or language delay, learning difficulties or autistic spectrum features. She has worked in this field for over 40 years. Cynthia has also specialised in working with children living in poverty, and uses the cognitive education methods of Reuven Feuerstein to support the learning of these disadvantaged children.Cynthia has more recently specialised in working with children who are able to speak in their home language, but do not speak at school if the language of the school is different from their home language. These children have usually relocated from another country, either by choice or as refugees, with the attendant fears, stresses and anxieties of the loss of familiar faces and spaces, and the loss of their home language. Her most recent book, StoryFrames, is a thoughtful presentation of a brief, low-cost programme to support these silent children.Cynthia's practice as a speech and language therapist is grounded in the work of developmental theorists such as Winnicott and Bowlby, narrative theorists such as Engel and Cattanach, and theories about children's play such as those of Piaget and Vygotsky. Cynthia believes that it is the relationship between the therapist and the child which is a vital and perhaps under-researched aspect of speech and language therapy. Cynthia has an M.Sc degree in Speech and Language Therapy and an M.A degree in Teaching English as a Second Language. She is a registered member of the U.K. Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT).