In order to provide the best possible reception service, we have increased the number of members of the professional development service of our kindergarten. Therefore, in addition to the pedagogue, psychologist, and health manager of the kindergarten, Dora Pribanić Maldini, a speech therapist, joined our team in February 2018. Instead of Dora Pribanić Maldini, as a replacement for maternity leave, from September 2022, speech therapist Ema Malešević is part of our team.

The presence of a speech therapist in the kindergarten is multifaceted because, as an expert in this field, she is continuously involved in the overall educational process in order to provide support to educators when it comes to the speech therapy assessment of each attendee of our kindergarten in the area of social communication skills (joint attention, communication functions and means), language comprehension, language production, speech (articulation of individual sounds, fluency, rhythm, and speech pace), voice and assessment of pre-skills in reading and writing (phonological awareness, naming, graphomotor skills, visual perception, storytelling). The decision to hire a speech therapist was additionally motivated by the support and desire of some parents to carry out speech therapy assessment and speech therapy treatments for their child in kindergarten.  Our speech therapist conducts speech therapy assessments of all enrolled children, observes children in the educational process, carries out consultations with teachers and parents, and suggests professional interventions in relation to the assessment. After the assessments, there is a possibility of registering the child for speech therapy treatment in kindergarten.

The decision to carry out said treatments in a kindergarten or in an external specialized institution depends entirely on the personal choice of the parent, on which we have absolutely no influence.

Personally, we think that speech therapy treatments in our kindergarten:

• enable children to access speech therapy treatments much more easily in the morning, when they are motivated and rested (in a familiar environment)
• allow parents more free time after work to spend with their children since the child already carried out speech therapy exercises in the morning during their stay in the kindergarten.

If you become concerned about your child’s language-speech-communication development at any point, feel free to contact our speech therapist by phone or email.

Mobile phone: +385 (0)91 444 8870

Email: logoped@mali-istrazivac.hr