The speech therapy provided in this practice will be coordinated with the other services the child receives, including the public school speech pathologists, teachers, ECI programs and private school programs.

• • • • • • • A compete evaluation will identify your child’s strengths and weaknesses and determine if your child qualifies for therapy. You will be given a written report about the evaluation and your therapist will review the report with you to ensure that you understand it and the recommendations made concerning your child.   You are encouraged to ask any questions about the report or the recommendations made.
            • If your child qualifies for therapy or regularly scheduled reassessments and monitoring, you will be provided with a home program so that you can carry over all goals and recommendations at home.
            • This home program may include teaching your child to say words, produce sentences, improve social communication, use an augmentative communication system, say specific sounds correctly, learn to chew and swallow safely or any of the communication/feeding and swallowing issues your child may exhibit.
            • One of our main objectives is to teach you to help you teach your child. When parents are actively involved in their child’s program and carry over the goals at home the progress made compared to “uninvolved” parents is amazing.  We believe that you know your child best and your therapist can help you to become your child’s best teacher.
            • Your child will always see the same Speech Pathologist in the same room. We do not “substitute” therapists or place of treatment. If your therapist must cancel, attempts will be made to reschedule your appointment. It takes at least three sessions to establish rapport and find a “rhythm” with your child, therefore substitute therapy sessions are not always effective.

Your child will be seen individually by their Speech Language Pathologist. We do occasionally conduct small groups to work specifically on pragmatic/social communication, but there is always one speech pathologist per child in the group to facilitate better communication.

The Staff has attended a number of Continuing Education workshops so that this clinic is able to offer the most up to date and advanced techniques available. Not everything works; therefore, it is critical that the therapists are competent in a variety of Evidence-Based approaches. This allows your Speech Language Pathologist to determine which approach is most beneficial.

Training has included:

Neurodevelopmental Treatment-Pediatric

Infant Feeding and Swallowing

Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Feeding and Swallowing

General Pediatric Feeding and Swallowing Assessment and Treatment (Sandy Mader, owner, has taught over 50 two day courses in a number of States on this topic)

SOS Feeding Program

Transitioning from gastrostomy tube to oral feeding

Experience with Tracheostomy and Ventilator dependent patients

Talk Tools and other oral motor exercise programs

Speech-EZ Apraxia Program

3D Apraxia Program

Social Communication and Pragmatic Training

Advanced training in a variety of high-tech Augmentative Communication Systems including commercially available dedicated communication devices and iPad apps.

Advanced training in treatment techniques for children on the Autism Spectrum (Sandy Mader, the owner, has taught over 50 workshops on Communication Strategies for Children on the Autism Spectrum)

ABA Training (not BCBA Certified) but numerous workshops in this area

Picture Exchange Communication System

Manual sign language to facilitate speech