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SERVICES

Our Treatments

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Pediatric Therapy Treatments

What We Treat

Children grow and develop at their own rate. Although some children walk and

talk early, others may be delayed in learning certain skills. If you have any

concerns about your child’s development, the earlier you seek help, the better.

Articulation and Speech Sound Development

Difficulty saying sounds, speaking clearly, or is hard to understand.

Apraxia

Problems controlling mouth muscles to speak clearly.

Social Communication

  • Trouble talking with other children

  • Difficulty making friends easily

  • May not understand what others think or how they feel

Cognitive Communication

These are the thinking skills your child needs to:

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  • Remember things

  • Solve problems

  • Use their imagination

Voice

  • May sound hoarse or lose their voice

  • Voice may be too loud or too soft

  • May sound like they talk through their nose, which is called Nasality

Stuttering

  • Difficulty speaking smoothly

  • May repeat sounds and words

  • Has long pauses when talking

  • Difficulty answering questions or giving speeches in front of the class

  • Struggles to talk to friends

Auditory Processing and Reading

Your child may have difficulty:

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  • Remembering what they hear

  • Understanding what’s said to them

  • Tracking the order of sounds or numbers spoken

  • Focusing and filtering out background sounds

Receptive and Expressive Language

  • Difficulty understanding what he or she hears

  • Reading and writing may be challenging

  • Difficulty following directions or answering questions

  • May be hard for your child to tell others about their thoughts

  • He or she may not say the correct words or say only short sentences

Feeding and Swallowing

Feeding disorders include problems with:

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  • Sucking

  • Eating from a spoon

  • Chewing

  • Drinking from a cup

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Swallowing disorders, also called Dysphagia, are difficulty moving food or liquid from the mouth, throat, or esophagus to the stomach.

Pediatric Services

SOS Approach to Feeding

The SOS (Sequential Oral Sensory) Approach to Feeding programs is an effective way to address problematic feeding behaviors in a variety of settings and populations. Parents and caregivers of children who will not eat are faced with a difficult and often puzzling challenge. Because the interplay between weight gain and a child’s experience of food can be complicated, there is rarely an easy solution when a feeding problem arises. The SOS Approach uses a transdisciplinary team approach that assesses the “whole child”: organ systems, muscles, development sensory, oral-motor, learning/behavior, cognition, nutrition, and environment. The SOS Approach focuses on increasing a child’s comfort level by exploring and learning about the different properties of food and allows a child to interact with food in a playful, non-stressful way, beginning with the ability to tolerate the food in the room and in front of him/her; then moving on to touching, kissing, and eventually tasting and eating foods.

Kaufman Speech to Language Protocol

The Kaufman Speech to Language Protocol is a way of teaching children with apraxia of speech the easiest way of saying words until they have increased motor-speech coordination. They are actually taught the shell of words without including too many of the complex consonants, vowels, or syllables, which make a word too difficult to even attempt on a motor basis. ​This teaching method is a reflection of how young children attempt “first words.” For example, the word “bottle” may begin as “ba,” progress to “baba,” later becomes “bado,” and eventually, “bottle.” From the very beginning of infant speech, there are very few “whole” words pronounced. The K-SLP gives children of all ages a way to attempt difficult words using word approximations and refining and reinforcing these attempts toward whole target words and phrases. It is a systematic approach and one that has been an extremely beneficial, logical, and efficient way to tackle developmental apraxia of speech. ​​Other methods are also integrated with the K-SLP that have been successful with adults who have lost the ability to speak. Many of these techniques have to do with the way in which the child learns cues to remind them how to say the word. The combination of these techniques comprises the Kaufman method.

Beckman Oral Motor Treatment 

​The Beckman Oral Motor Therapy uses assisted movement and stretch reflexes to quantify response to pressure and movement, range, strength, variety, and control of movement for the lips, cheeks, jaw, tongue, and soft palate. The assessment is based on clinically defined functional parameters of minimal competence and does not require the cognitive participation of the individual. Because these components of movement are functional, not age specific, the protocol is useful with a wide range of ages (birth to geriatric) and diagnostic categories.​ ​Oral motor skills impact basic survival, such as sucking and swallowing in infants that begin by the third month of gestation. Development of these skills enhances the progression from milk to pureed food and table foods. Oral skills also impact the control needed for speech development, from producing the cooing sounds as an infant to articulating complex words in conversational speech

Talktools

Oral Placement Therapy (OPT) uses a hierarchical-based approach to improve speech clarity and feeding skills in individuals of all ages and across diagnoses. These innovative techniques focus on motor movement activities used to improve phonation, resonation, and speech clarity. Combined with a tactile-sensory approach, OPT provides a comprehensive solution to a variety of speech and feeding issues. OPT involves the use of therapy tools to train and transition muscle movements for speech production. Our techniques, applied in combination with the tools, make a difference in clients’ lives.

The Listening Program

The brain is musical; neuroscience has proven through functional brain imaging that when we listen to music, virtually the whole brain is involved. Music listening not only involves the auditory areas of the brain but also engages large-scale neural networks, including; the prefrontal cortex, motor cortex, sensory cortex, auditory cortex, visual cortex, cerebellum, hippocampus, amygdala, nucleus accumbens, corpus callosum, autonomic nervous system, vestibular system, and the enteric nervous system. The Listening Program® music helps conduct the neural symphony, connecting the most ancient parts of the brain to the most advanced.

Integrated LISTENING Systems

The iLs methodology integrates music, movement, and language exercises for the purpose of improving brain function. iLs programs are designed to be fun and may be used on their own or in conjunction with other methods. We train for brain/body integration through a staged approach, starting with the fundamentals of sensory integration and then extending through more complex cognitive functions, including language, self-expression, and social skills.

Bright Solutions

A great tutoring system for adults who struggle with spelling, reading, and writing due to dyslexia or a learning disability.

PROMPT

PROMPT is an acronym for Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets. The technique is a tactile-kinesthetic approach that uses touch cues to a patient’s articulators (jaw, tongue, lips) to manually guide them through a targeted word, phrase, or sentence. The technique develops motor control and the development of proper oral muscular movements while eliminating unnecessary muscle movements, such as jaw sliding and inadequate lip rounding. ​Therapists begin by helping patients produce certain phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest increment of sound in speech. For example, the “d” sound in the word dog is one phoneme, the “o” is another, and the “g” is yet another. Each phoneme requires different muscle contractions/retractions and placement/movement of the jaw, lips, tongue, neck, and chest to produce. All of these things have to happen with the proper timing and sequence to produce one phoneme correctly.  The therapist attempts to “teach” the patient’s muscles to produce a phoneme correctly by stimulating all of these through touch. With the timing and movement of more than 100 muscles involved, you can see why the training is so intense. ​PROMPT therapy is appropriate for a wide range of patients with communication disorders. The most common patients have motor speech disorders and articulation problems or are non-verbal children. Many patients with aphasia, apraxia/dyspraxia, dysarthria, pervasive development disorders, cerebral palsy, acquired brain injuries, and autism spectrum disorders have benefitted from PROMPT therapy. An evaluation by a PROMPT-trained speech therapist is the only way to find out if a patient is appropriate for the therapy.

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Adult Therapy Treatments

What We Treat

There are many reasons why adults may be referred to our clinic to receive speech

therapy. Our therapists conduct diagnostic testing to see if the patient has

speech, language, thinking, or swallowing problems.

Aphasia

Problems speaking, understanding, reading, writing, or using numbers

due to stroke or brain injury.

Cognitive Communication Disorders

Problems with memory, reasoning,

problem-solving, and attention.

Dysarthria

Weakness or tightness in speech muscles that cause slurred or very quiet speech that may be hard to understand.

Voice Disorders

Changes in how a person’s voice might sound, for example:

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  • Higher or lower pitch

  • Hoarseness

  • Too soft or too loud

  • Unable to make sound

Swallowing (Dysphagia)

Problems chewing or swallowing that can lead to:

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  • Dehydration

  • Malnutrition

  • Food or liquid going into the airway, called aspiration

  • Frequent pneumonia or respiratory infections

  • Less enjoyment of eating

  • Difficulty eating because of drooling or other problems ― the need for tube feeding or other ways to receive nutrition

Adult Services

Myofascial Release

Myofascial Release therapy for dysphagia is offered by our clinicians who have participated in specialized training. These manual techniques are used in combination with exercise to reshape, improve flexibility, and facilitate proper movement patterns of connective tissue that may have been damaged or scarred as a result of various medical procedures or diseases. The patient who has tightening or ulceration of connective surface tissue may benefit from Myofascial Release treatment.

Vital Stim Therapy for Dysphagia

The VitalStim Therapy System is an adjunctive modality to traditional exercise that unites the power of electrical stimulation with the benefits of swallowing exercises. Combining VitalStim and traditional therapy allows clinicians to accelerate strengthening, restore function, and help the brain remap the swallow. Research has demonstrated that combining these therapies results in better outcomes than using either one alone.

Lee Silverman Voice Treatment

The Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT LOUD) is an effective speech treatment for individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) and other neurological conditions.  LSVT LOUD, named for Mrs. Lee Silverman (Lee Silverman Voice Treatment – LSVT), was developed in 1987 and has been scientifically studied for nearly 20 years with funding support from the National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the National Institutes of Health. Published research data support improvements in vocal loudness, intonation, and voice quality for individuals with PD who received LSVT LOUD, with improvements maintained up to two years after treatment. Recent research studies have also documented the effectiveness of this therapy in improving the common problems of disordered articulation, diminished facial expression, and impaired swallowing. Additionally, two brain imaging studies have documented evidence of positive changes in the brain following the administration of the therapy. LSVT LOUD improves vocal loudness by stimulating the muscles of the voice box (larynx) and speech mechanism through a systematic hierarchy of exercises. Focused on a single goal “speak LOUD!” – the treatment improves respiratory, laryngeal, and articulatory function to maximize speech intelligibility. The treatment does not train people to shout or yell; rather, LSVT LOUD uses loudness training to bring the voice to an improved, healthy vocal loudness with no strain. ​Treatment is administered in 16 sessions over a single month (four individual 60-minute sessions per week). This intensive mode of administration is consistent with theories of motor learning and skill acquisition, as well as with principles of neural plasticity (the capacity of the nervous system to change in response to signals), and is critical to attaining optimal results. The treatment not only simulates the motor system but also incorporates sensory awareness training to help individuals with PD recognize that their voice is too soft, convincing them that the louder voice is within normal limits and making them comfortable with their new louder voice. ​Patients are trained to self-generate an adequate amount of loudness to make their speech understood. While LSVT LOUD has been successfully administered to individuals in all stages of PD, the treatment has been most effective among those who are in the early or middle stages of the condition. LSVT LOUD has also been applied to individuals with sub-types of PD (Shy-Drager syndrome, multi-system atrophy, and progressive supranuclear palsy). However, the largest dataset is for individuals with Idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD). Recently, LSVT LOUD has been applied to select individuals with stroke, multiple sclerosis, Down syndrome, and cerebral palsy with positive outcomes.

Beckman Oral Motor Treatment 

​The Beckman Oral Motor Therapy uses assisted movement and stretch reflexes to quantify response to pressure and movement, range, strength, variety, and control of movement for the lips, cheeks, jaw, tongue, and soft palate. The assessment is based on clinically defined functional parameters of minimal competence and does not require the cognitive participation of the individual. Because these components of movement are functional, not age specific, the protocol is useful with a wide range of ages (birth to geriatric) and diagnostic categories.​ ​Oral motor skills impact basic survival, such as sucking and swallowing in infants that begin by the third month of gestation. Development of these skills enhances the progression from milk to pureed food and table foods. Oral skills also impact the control needed for speech development, from producing the cooing sounds as an infant to articulating complex words in conversational speech

PROMPT

PROMPT is an acronym for Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets. The technique is a tactile-kinesthetic approach that uses touch cues to a patient’s articulators (jaw, tongue, lips) to manually guide them through a targeted word, phrase, or sentence. The technique develops motor control and the development of proper oral muscular movements while eliminating unnecessary muscle movements, such as jaw sliding and inadequate lip rounding. ​Therapists begin by helping patients produce certain phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest increment of sound in speech. For example, the “d” sound in the word dog is one phoneme, the “o” is another, and the “g” is yet another. Each phoneme requires different muscle contractions/retractions and placement/movement of the jaw, lips, tongue, neck, and chest to produce. All of these things have to happen with the proper timing and sequence to produce one phoneme correctly.  The therapist attempts to “teach” the patient’s muscles to produce a phoneme correctly by stimulating all of these through touch. With the timing and movement of more than 100 muscles involved, you can see why the training is so intense. ​PROMPT therapy is appropriate for a wide range of patients with communication disorders. The most common patients have motor speech disorders and articulation problems or are non-verbal children. Many patients with aphasia, apraxia/dyspraxia, dysarthria, pervasive development disorders, cerebral palsy, acquired brain injuries, and autism spectrum disorders have benefitted from PROMPT therapy. An evaluation by a PROMPT-trained speech therapist is the only way to find out if a patient is appropriate for the therapy.

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