Speech therapy??

Ok, I just posted in another thread, but wanted to ask a few questions. Has anyone had a child reffered to a speech therapist? If so what do they do? Alex is 2 and a half, and only saying a few words, and he only says part of the word. I have talked to plunket, and if he does not improve dramatically in the next 4 months he will be reffered to a specialist.

The words he says are:

ti - kitty
de - daddy
tra - car
tra - truck
grin - green
bllu - blue (said without opening his mouth)
daa - duck
daa - stuck
be - baby
ow - no
dee - teddy
poo (typical he gets that one right!!)

There are a few more, but none that he says correctly.

I don't know what to do with him. Everytime he says a word I repeat it correctly. We say lots of words, look at pictures and say the word etc. He is nowhere near putting words together, and is so far behind where he should be for his age.

Help... what can I do with him?? Should I be worried, or will he be ok, just late with his talking?

I've not taken a child to a speech therapist, sorry, but if it helps to put your mind at ease, DH and I both had to see them as pre-schoolers - I was saying a lot of words back to front, (was also very hairing-impaired), and DH replaced the ends of each word he said with "gah" (how random is that?!?  Ah, kids eh).  My mum would tell you that even with the rocky start that sure as hell didn't stop me from talking her ear off... heck, I can't even type a brief post here!!  So much going on and on and on to be done!  So even though it does seem like he's taking his time with his speech compared to a lot of his peers, remember that those milestones aren't instructions on how toddlers are to develop, they're just very general averages, and doing something earlier or later than the usual is no reflection on his abilities.  That said, I don't think there's any harm in seeing a speech therapist - they're well used to working with preschoolers and the sessions are made 'fun' for the kids. 

Forgot to say we were also told in a speech therapy/cleft seminar thing that as long as your child (around this age) is speaking 20 words that you can understand then they dont really consider there to be a problem. we specifically asked if it mattered if only the parent can understand and they said no it didnt. My friends wee girl is 3 next month and is still quite hard to understand aswell.