Portugal

In Portugal, commissions and working groups devoted to speech, language or communication disorders in children are essentially ordered by the Ministry of Education. The field had broadened out considerably in Portugal, due to an awareness of the impact of the language difficulties on the social and academic performance of children. There are no formal prevalence studies of developmental language disorder (DLD) in Portugal. In Portugal, speech and language therapists for children with DLD is funded by health, education or social security depending on where it is delivered. Some speech and language therapists (SLT) work directly with small groups of children with DLD but the majority intervene with individual children at school or in their private clinic. SLT interventions are mainly influenced by cognitive constructivism, nativism/generative grammar or sociocognitive theory. Language skills must be recognized as crucial for children’s well-being, and language screening should be universally introduced into health care services at an early age.