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Speech Therapy at City Hospital
What do speech pathologists evaluate?Evaluations may include assessment of skills in the following areas:
- Aphasia due to a stroke or neurological impairment
- Articulation and intelligibility
- Assistive & augmentative communication
- Auditory processing: interpreting information you hear
- Cognition/play
- Dysphagia/ difficulty swallowing
- Expressive language: communicating through words, gestures and/or alternative methods
- Feeding difficulties: texture defensiveness and sensitivity. Extreme food selectivity
- Fluency/stuttering
- Pragmatic language/social skills
- Receptive language: comprehending and understanding
- Swallowing
- Voice
Treatment may be recommended based on evaluation results from specialized testing and clinical judgement. Treatment goals will be achieved using the most appropriate intervention strategy and/or a combination of strategies. Treatment approaches may include:
- Traditional speech and language treatment
- Structured play
- Phonological approach
- Oral motor for feeding development
- Sensory integration for functional feeding
- Collaboration with home and community therapists
- Caregiver education and training
Your child should be referred for speech/language therapy services if he/she exhibits any of the following:
- Multiple errors in speech and is not understood by age 3.
- Inconsistent errors, unintelligible speech, extremely limited numbers of sounds.
- Not making eye contact and turn taking with actions or vocalizations by 6 months of age, or not recognizing objects or pictures by age 2.
- Non-verbal or speaking only in single words at 2.5 years of age; or if unable to produce complete, complex sentences by age 4.
- Trouble recalling and using new information because of problems with language, attention and memory.
- Unable to interact with others at an age-appropriate level, such as following rules of conversation.
Voice does not sound right. For example, hoarse, raspy, breathy or if the child likes to scream or talk loudly.
- Stuttering.
- Cannot manage the transition to table foods.
Dysphagia & Modified Barium Swallow Studies
- For individuals experiencing difficulty with eating and those who have suspected aspiration (food/liquid going into lungs instead of stomach), a modified barium swallow study may be completed to facilitate diagnosis and treatment of swallowing problems.
- A modified barium swallow study is a video x-ray taken while the individual is eating and/or drinking. It is used to assess the safety of the swallow and to determine what foods and liquids would be the safest for the individual to swallow.
- These studies are medically supervised and performed by a team that includes a speech language pathologist and radiology technicians.
Our Speech Therapy Department is headed by Lindsey Holmes, M.S. CCC-SLP.