This book contains contributions from eminent clinicians and researchers in the field of language impairment, and crosses the bridge between children and adults. It reflects the developments that have taken place in Speech and Language Therapy over the past 10 years and focuses on issues in SLT that have recently come into ascendancy. These include: personal and social consequences of language disability, and how to measure these; the evidence base for speech and language therapy interventions; language processing and the interplay between language and cognition; and the degree to which impairments in one affect the other. There is a growing concern about the needs of adolescents who have language difficulties - a group who, by their age, development and experience straddle the child/adult divide. It extends the themes by looking at future implications and sets out the challenges ahead for the speech and language therapy profession.