Solution Focused Brief Therapy with Children Who Stutter

Historically, speech and language therapists within the field of fluency disorders have drawn on a wide range of psychological approaches when working with children, parents, young people and adults who stutter. Therapy is often an integrated approach involving traditional therapy components such as speech fluency management and social communication skills, as well as a focus on the emotional and cognitive aspects of stuttering (Cook & Botterill, 2005; Everard, 2013; Guitar, 2006; Kelman & Nicholas, 2008; Langevin, Kully & Ross-Harold, 2007).Solution Focused Brief Therapy is a psychological approach increasingly being used by speech and language therapists working with a range of communication disorders including stuttering (Burns, 2013, 2005; Cook & Botterill, 2005; McNeill, 2013). This paper will present the key principles and techniques of solution focused brief therapy and discuss how the approach can be adapted in order to have effective solution focused conversations with children who stutter.