Meet your trainer

Andrea Richards

Andrea Richards is an independent speech and language therapist whose specialism is working with mainstream primary schools, bridging the gap between education and health.

She prioritises recommendations from high profile reviews, such as the Bercow Report and ICAN’s ‘Speaking up for the Covid Generation’, in which early identification of need, early intervention, and joint working between services are highlighted as essential.

Andrea is the author of The Chatterbugs Manual – a 12 week programme designed to develop the foundation communication skills in children in the Early Years’ Foundation Stage (Nursery and Reception).  The targeted skills are attention and listening, turn-taking, and building vocabulary and sentence structure, thereby developing children’s readiness for learning in school.

Andrea has extensive clinical experience working with a wide range of clients, from pre-schoolers to young adults. Having also worked as a Teaching Fellow at University College London, contributing to the undergraduate and postgraduate Speech Therapy courses, her clinical practice is informed by sound evidence-based approaches.

Her website can be found at www.chatschool.org