SPEECH INFORMATION

Educational Therapy Services Inc provides speech-language therapy services to students enrolled in public and charter schools throughout Phoenix and the surrounding areas. We are committed to the provision of speech-language therapy services for students with special needs in communication. These services are delivered as part of our educational program and directed towards educational outcomes.

• What is a Speech-Language Pathologist?
• What is a speech and language disorder?
• What is Early Intervention?

What is a Speech-Language Pathologist?

A Speech-Language Pathologist is a specialist who:

• Helps people develop their communication abilities and treats speech, language, and voice disorders.
• Provides services including prevention, identification, evaluation, treatment, and rehabilitation of communication disorders.
• May conduct research to develop new and better ways to diagnose and remediate speech/language problems.
• Works with children who have language delays and speech problems.
• Provides treatment to people who stutter and to those with voice and articulation problems.
• Plans and conducts activities to improve a student’s communication skills (speaking, listening, thinking, reading, and writing.
• Collaborates with parents, teachers, caregivers, and other professionals in understanding and meeting a student’s communication and academic needs.
• Writes Individual Education Plans (IEP) for students with communication disorders as required by federal laws.
• Educates parents, teachers, and administrators about communication disorders.
• May aid people with foreign or regional accents who want to learn another speech style.
• Has received at least a master’s degree from an accredited university.
• Is licensed to practice by each state.
• May be clinically certified by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association

What is a speech and language disorder?

Speech and language disorders refer to problems in communication and related areas such as oral motor function. These delays and disorders range from simple sound substitutions range from simple sound substitutions to the inability to understand or use language or use the oral-motor mechanism for functional speech and feeding. Some caused of speech and language disorders include hearing loss, neurological disorders, brain injury, mental retardation, drug abuse, physical impairments such as cleft lip or palate, and vocal abuse or misuse. Frequently, however, the cause is unknown.

Incidence

One in ten Americans has a communication disorder because of stroke, an undetected hearing loss, a stuttering problem, a head injury, a language disorder, or some other disorder or problem that interferes with speech, language, or hearing.

An estimated six million children under the age of 18 have a speech or language disorder. Boys make up two-thirds of the population. Over one million children received services for speech or language disorders under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in the 1997-1998 school year. This number represents a 10.5% increase from a decade earlier.

Characteristics

A child’s communication is considered delayed when the child is noticeably behind his or her peers in the acquistion of speech and/or language skills. Sometimes a child will have greater receptive (understanding) than expressive (speaking) language skills, but this is not always the case.

Speech and language disorders can affect the way children talk, understand, analyze or process information. Speech disorders include the clarity, voice quality, and fluency of a child’s spoken words. Language disorders include a child’s ability to hold meaningful conversations, understand others, problem solve, read and comprehend, and express thoughts through spoken or written words.

Speech disorders refer to difficulties producing speech sounds or problems with voice quality. They might be characterized by an interruption in the flow or rhythm of speech, such as stuttering, which is called dysfluency. Speech disorders may be problems with the way sounds are formed, called articulation or phonological disorders, or they may be difficulties with the pitch, volume or quality of the voice. There may be a combination of several problems. People with speech disorders have trouble using some speech sounds, which can also be a symptom of a delay. They may say “see” when they mean “ski” or they may have trouble using other sounds like “l” or “r”. Listeners may have trouble understanding what someone with a speech disorder is trying to say. People with voice disorders may have trouble with the way their voices sound.

A language disorder is an impairment in the ability to understand and/or use words in context, both verbally and nonverbally. Some characteristics of language disorders include improper use of words and their meanings, inability to express ideas, inappropriate grammatical patterns, reduced vocabulary and inability to follow directions. One or a combination of these characteristics may occur in children who are affected by language learning disabilities or developmental language delay. Children may hear or see a word but not be able to understand its meaning. They may have trouble getting others to understand what they are trying to communicate.

What is Early Intervention?

Early intervention applies to children of school age or younger who are discovered to have or be at risk of developing a handicapping condition or other special need that may affect their development. Early intervention consists in the provision of services such children and their families for the purpose of lessening the effects of the condition. Early intervention can be remedial or preventive in nature—remediating existing developmental problems or preventing their occurrence.

Early intervention may focus on the child alone or on the child and the family together. Early intervention programs may be center-based, home-based, hospital-based, or a combination. Services range from identification—that is, hospital or school screening and referral services—to diagnostic and direct intervention programs. Early intervention may begin at any time between birth and school age; however, there are many reasons for it to begin as early as possible.

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Why Intervene Early?

There are three primary reasons for intervening early with an exceptional child: to enhance the child’s development, to provide support and assistance to the family, and to maximize the child’s and family’s benefit to society.

Child development research has established that the rate of human learning and development is most rapid in the preschool years. Timing of intervention becomes particularly important when a child runs the risk of missing an opportunity to learn during a state of maximum readiness. If the most teachable moments or stages of greatest readiness are not taken advantage of, a child may have difficulty learning a particular skill at a later time. Karnes and Lee (1978) have noted that ‘only through early identification and appropriate programming can children develop their potential’ (p. 1).

Early intervention services also have a significant impact on the parents and siblings of an exceptional infant or young child. The family of a young exceptional child often feels disappointment, social isolation, added stress, frustration, and helplessness. The compounded stress of the presence of an exceptional child may affect the family’s well-being and interfere with the child’s development. Families of handicapped children are found to experience increased instances of divorce and suicide, and the handicapped child is more likely to be abused than is a nonhandicapped child. Early intervention can result in parents having improved attitudes about themselves and their child, improved information and skills for teaching their child, and more release time for leisure and employment. Parents of gifted preschoolers also need early services so that they may better provide the supportive and nourishing environment needed by the child.

A third reason for intervening early is that society will reap maximum benefits. The child’s increased developmental and educational gains and decreased dependence upon social institutions, the family’s increased ability to cope with the presence of an exceptional child, and perhaps the child’s increased eligibility for employment, all provide economic as well as social benefits.

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Is Early Intervention Really Effective?

After nearly 50 years of research, there is evidence—both quantitative (data-based) and qualitative (reports of parents and teachers)—that early intervention increases the developmental and educational gains for the child, improves the functioning of the family, and reaps long-term benefits for society. Early intervention has been shown to result in the child: (a) needing fewer special education and other habilitative services later in life; (b) being retained in grade less often; and© in some cases being indistinguishable from nonhandicapped classmates years after intervention.

Disadvantaged and gifted preschool-aged children benefit from early intervention as well. Longitudinal data on disadvantaged children who had participated in the Ypsilanti Perry Preschool Project showed that they had maintained significant gains at age 19 (Berrueta-Clement, Schweinhart, Barnett, Epstein, Weikart, 1984). These children were more committed to schooling and more of them finished high school and went on to postsecondary programs and employment than children who did not attend preschool. They scored higher on reading, arithmetic, and language achievement tests at all grade levels; showed a 50% reduction in the need for special education services through the end of high school; and showed fewer anti-social or delinquent behaviors outside of school. Karnes (1983) asserts that underachievement in the gifted child may be prevented by early identification and appropriate programming.

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Is Early Intervention Cost Effective?

The available data emphasize the long-term cost effectiveness of early intervention. The highly specialized, comprehensive services necessary to produce the desired developmental gains are often, on a short-term basis, more costly than traditional school-aged service delivery models. However, there are significant examples of long-term cost savings that result from such early intervention programs.

A longitudinal study of children who had participated in the Perry Preschool Project (Schweinhart and Weikart, 1980) found that when schools invest about $3,000 for 1 year of preschool education for a child, they immediately begin to recover their investment through savings in special education services. Benefits included $668 from the mother’s released time while the child attended preschool; $3,353 saved by the public schools because children with preschool education had fewer years in grades; and $10,798 n projected lifetime earnings for the child.

Wood (1981) calculated the total cumulative costs to age 18 of special education services to child beginning intervention at: (a) birth ; (b) age 2; (c) age 6; and (d) at age 6 with no eventual movement to regular education. She found that the total costs were actually less if begun at birth! Total cost of special services begun at birth was $37,273 and total cost if begun at age 6 was between $46,816 and $53,340. The cost is less when intervention is earlier because of the remediation and prevention of developmental problems which would have required special services later in life.

A 3-year follow-up in Tennessee showed that for every dollar spent on early treatment, $7.00 in savings were realized within 36 months. This savings resulted from deferral or special class placement and institutionalization of severe behavior disordered children (Snider, Sullivan, and Manning, 1974).

A recent evaluation of Colorado’s state-wide early intervention services reports a cost savings of $4.00 for every dollar spent within a 3-year period (McNulty, Smith, and Soper, 1983).