What does it mean to be ASHA-certified?

During an evaluation, your therapist will complete:
  • Case history including educational background, medical history, family history, and developmental history
  • Client and family interview
  • Screening of auditory, visual, motor, and cognitive status
  • Oral language sample
  • Written language sample/writing sample (if applicable)
  • Standardized and/or non-standardized measures of specific aspects of speech skills, intelligibility, spoken and non-spoken language, cognitive-communication, social-communication, observations, and analysis of work samples
  • Identification of potential for effective intervention strategies and/or referrals
  • Recommendation of follow-up services if necessary

What does an evaluation look like?

  • Therapy is provided by appointment only and is typically provided once or twice per week depending on clinician's recommendation. 
  • Therapy is typically play-based and led by the child's interests in order to develop relationship and grow language naturally and efficiently.
  • Therapy focuses on developing a child's functional communication across a variety of settings and helping the child to gain independence with developmentally-appropriate skills.
  • Skills addressed include: producing age appropriate sounds, listening and comprehension skills, developing vocabulary, engaging in conversation, asking and answering questions, following directions, increasing phrase length, understanding figurative language, understanding nonverbal communication,  and more. 
  • Parents are welcomed in therapy sessions! We desire to equip and empower parents and encourage them to carry over therapy strategies at home.

What does therapy look like?

What areas do you treat?

  • Speech sound disorders (lisp, weak "r", etc.)
  • Phonological disorders (deletes final consonants, difficulty producing consonant clusters,  deletes part of words, swapping /t, d/ for /k, g/ as in "dut" for "duck" or "do" for "go", etc.)
  • Poor intelligibility/difficult to understand
  • Language delay/late talkers 
  • Childhood apraxia of speech 
  • Receptive and expressive language disorders
  • Written language disorders (such as dyslexia)
  • Early literacy skills
  • Literacy evaluations for ages 4-12 including assessment of fluency, decoding, spelling, phonological awareness, oral and written narrative, and integrated language skills.
  • Differential diagnostic report that includes the client's strengths and weaknesses and identifies appropriate diagnoses when applicable.
  • Individualized treatment plan utilizing evidence-based practices that are applicable to your child.
  • Treatment may include phonological awareness, letter recognition, sound-letter correspondence, sight word recognition, reading fluency, spelling skills, vocabulary skills, written narrative skills, and expository writing skills.
  • All literacy treatment incorporates a multi-sensory approach in order to engage and rewire the brain for the most efficacious treatment. Resources utilized may include Smarter Intervention (ASCEND), MegaWords, Phonological Sensitivity Inventory, and more.

What literacy services do you provide?

What are the benefits of working with an out-of network provider?

There are many benefits of working with a private pay therapist. Here are a few!

  • Authorization from your insurance company is not required prior to receiving an evaluation or before beginning treatment. This allows your child to receive services sooner and continue services without unnecessary delays.
  • Your child does not need to have a certain standard score or severity of disorder in order to be approved for services. If your child’s communication is functionally impaired, and therapy is deemed appropriate by you and your child's therapist, then your child can receive services. 
  • A formal assessment is not required. Insurance companies typically require standardized assessments to be completed during all evaluations. However, we recognize that some children are better assessed through informal evaluation, language/writing sample, clinical observation, etc. Some children are unable to appropriately participate in standardized assessment or are better able to exhibit their skills in an informal assessment. 
  • Treatment plans are able to be tailored specifically to your child's needs and to what is most important to you regarding your child's communication skills. Often times insurance companies are able to dictate your child's care. By seeing a private pay therapist, you are not restricted by the types of goals that your insurance company approves and are able to be an integral part of your child's care. 
  • Many insurance plans have a limited number of therapy sessions that they will allow per year. By seeing a private therapist, you are able to get as many sessions as you and your child's therapist deem to be appropriate for your child's specific needs.
  • Private therapists are generally much less over-worked and are able to provide more attentive and individualized care to your child. Typically this also leads to faster progress.