The Barrett Family Wellness Center offers a multi-disciplinary approach to speech therapy, which is also beneficial for children with additional sensory based concerns.
Our Speech and Language Department assesses and treats children with a variety of communication delays/disorders including those children diagnosed with PDD/Autism, receptive and expressive delays, speech sound disorders including articulation and phonological issues, social/pragmatic difficulties, and feeding and oral motor difficulties.
Following an initial speech and language assessment, therapeutic intervention may be recommended to treat your child’s delay or disorder. Our services includes the following:
- Therapy specifically designed for your child’s needs including targeted goals, customized therapy length, and home work assignments to promote use of skills outside of the Center.
- Therapeutic tasks may involve new skills (e.g. how to produce a new sound), reduced behaviors that interfere with communicative intents, use of augmentative or alternative means for communication.
- Treatment techniques varied with your child’s skill level, motivation and progress but involving: drill and practice, cognitive play, child-led play, clinician-led play, casual conversation, sensory gym activities (e.g. swing, zip-line), fine motor room activities (e.g. painting).
- A positive, functional rapport and routine with your child through the use of games, rewards, puzzles, fine motor activities, and sensory gym, large motor activities.
- Parent reports relayed verbally following each treatment session as to what happened that session and areas that can be practiced during that week. Therapists are also available by email to answer questions you may have during the week.
- Qualified clinicians both as Speech and Language Pathologists (SLPs) and Speech and Language Pathology Assistants (SLPAs) are available at our center. All SLPs have a Master’s Degree in the field as well as national certification from the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA). SLPs conduct evaluations, write goals, and provide therapy. All SLPAs have a bachelor’s degree in the field. SLPAs carry-out therapeutic goals written by SLPs. Both SLPs and SLPAs participate in ongoing, continuing education activities to stay up to date with new techniques and strategies.
Some of our sessions incorporate the following products, which may also be used at home:
Proloquo2Go™ – an application which can be purchased for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch which serves as a communication solution for people who have difficulty speaking. It brings natural sounding text-to-speech voices, approximately 8,000 up-to-date symbols, a large default vocabulary, and it is highly customizable for each user. Several of our staff members are trained on the uses of this product, and are able to guide parents as to how to set up the application for their own version use in the home.
Boardmaker® allows the design of printed materials, like communication boards, sequences, and schedules with Picture Communication Symbols (PCS™). Our therapists use these symbols frequently and can help parents develop a system for their use outside the Center.
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