Stephen is a speech and language therapist (SaLT), trainer and author of practical language development resources for teachers and SaLT. He has 35 years’ experience in the field, including 1996–2017 in Hackney and the City of London where he was speech and language therapy service manager for a number of years. Stephen is co-author of best-selling resources Language for Thinking, Word Aware (1, 2 and 3), and Language for Behaviour and Emotions. He was joint operational lead for the Educational Endowment Foundation research project Concept Cat which investigated the effectiveness of teaching vocabulary in Early Years. The Concept Cat book has recently been published and the Word Aware Concept Assessment is due out soon.

Stephen graduated in speech pathology from Flinders University in Australia, before attaining a MSc in speech and Language therapy from City University, London in 2000. He was chair of NAPLIC, the UK organisation for professionals working with developmental language disorder for a total of eight years, and is current chair of RADLD, the international campaign to raise awareness of developmental language disorder and co-chair of the Speech, Language and Communication Alliance. In 2021 Stephen was the recipient of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists’ Sternberg Award for clinical innovation.