A dyslexia assessment in Melbourne with Hello Learners shows you exactly where your child's reading is breaking down — and what to do about it. Our assessments are led by speech pathologists, and you don't need a referral or an existing diagnosis to book. We work with primary school–aged children from across Melbourne and our clinic is based in North Melbourne.
Many parents arrive knowing something isn't quite right, but aren't sure whether it's worth investigating. Here are the signs that suggest a comprehensive assessment would be worthwhile.
Reading takes much longer than it should for your child's age, and feels exhausting rather than automatic.
Your child struggles to blend sounds together or decode unfamiliar words — guessing from the first letter instead.
The same word is spelled several different ways, or spelling doesn't improve despite practice and effort.
They resist books, homework, and reading aloud — often because it feels hard and discouraging, not because they're disengaged.
There's a clear gap between what your child is capable of verbally or intellectually, and what shows up on the page.
Dyslexia runs in families. If a parent or sibling has struggled with reading or spelling, the risk is meaningfully higher.
Not every child who struggles with reading has dyslexia, but every child who struggles deserves a clear picture of why. Learn more about dyslexia support in Melbourne.
Our assessments are comprehensive and speech-pathology-led. Rather than a single test, we look across the full range of skills that underpin reading and spelling — so we can tell you exactly where the breakdown is happening and why.
We start by listening to you. Your observations about your child's reading, learning history, and any family history of literacy difficulty are a crucial part of the picture.
We assess your child's ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the sounds within words — the foundational skill that underpins reading and spelling.
We test how well your child can apply letter–sound knowledge to decode both real words and unfamiliar nonsense words — a reliable window into their reading mechanics.
We look at how accurately and smoothly your child reads connected text — including their rate, the types of errors they make, and how they self-correct.
Spelling is a direct reflection of how a child understands the sound–symbol system. We assess both written spelling and the strategies your child uses when they get stuck.
Reading isn't just decoding — it's understanding. We look at vocabulary, listening comprehension, and how your child makes meaning from text.
Taken together, these assessments pinpoint exactly which underlying skills are breaking down — and provide a clear basis for what needs to be targeted in intervention.
After the assessment, you'll receive a clear, plain-language written report — written for parents, not just clinicians. It won't be full of jargon you have to look up.
The report gives you a full picture of your child's literacy profile: what they're doing well, where the gaps are, and why those gaps are there. It explains the findings in the context of what research tells us about how reading develops — so you understand not just what, but why.
Most importantly, it comes with practical, prioritised recommendations for next steps. If the Hello Learners literacy program looks like a good fit for your child, we'll explain how it works and what it involves. But there's no obligation — the report stands on its own, and the recommendations will be useful whatever path you choose.
A full summary of findings, written clearly for parents — shareable with teachers and other professionals.
A clear picture of strengths and difficulties — not a single label, but a map of how your child reads and spells.
Prioritised recommendations — including whether the Hello Learners program is a good fit — so you know exactly what to do next.
Reading is a language skill. When a child learns to read, their brain is learning to map the sound structure of spoken language — phonemes — onto written symbols. When that process breaks down, the problem is almost always sitting inside the language system, not the visual one.
Speech pathologists are specifically trained in how spoken and written language develop, how phonological processing works, and what happens when it doesn't. That means we're not just looking for a score that sits below a cutoff — we're trained to understand the mechanism behind the difficulty. We can tell you not just that your child is struggling, but exactly which part of the reading system is letting them down.
That clinical understanding is what makes the assessment useful — and what connects it directly to the right intervention.
The research is clear: difficulties with reading and spelling are rooted in how the brain processes language — particularly the sounds that make up words. Speech pathologists are trained in exactly this area. We assess what's going wrong, explain why, and point families toward the intervention that will actually help.
Our clinic is based in North Melbourne, and we see families from across Melbourne's inner north and west. If you're not sure whether we're close enough for you, get in touch — many families find the commute worthwhile for a specialist assessment.
We regularly work with families from:
Don't see your suburb? Reach out — if we can't help directly, we'll do our best to point you in the right direction.
If you would like to discuss whether Hello Learners is a suitable program for your child, please book a fifteen-minute conversation by phone with one of our speech pathologists. There is no fee for this conversation, and no obligation to enrol.
Term 3 spots are limited.
Or write to us at admin@hellokidstherapyhub.com.au.