Services
We offer a wide range of speech therapy for adults and children. We are currently registered with the following health insurance providers: Premera Care Plans, First Choice, Aetna and Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Therapy Services are provided in person or via teletherapy.
Services for Adults
Contemporary speech therapy for communication, voice and swallowing.
A voice therapy specifically designed for people with Parkinson’s disease or for people with other neurological conditions. Key to the treatment is helping people “recalibrate” their perceptions so they know how loud or soft they sound to other people and can feel comfortable using a stronger voice at a normal loudness level. (LVST Global Website) For more information please check out the website below: https://www.lsvtglobal.com/LSVTLoud
The VitalStim ® System is a non-invasive therapy for treating dysphagia, obtained by external electrical stimulation which is applied to the front of the neck. The VitalStim ® Therapy System uses small electrical currents to stimulate the muscles responsible for swallowing. At the same time speech therapists help patients to re-educate their muscles through rehabilitative treatment.
Treatment sessions usually last one hour. Patients often see results from between 6 to 16 treatment sessions.
Strategies taught to facilitate increased ability to learn new material and remember new information.
Strategies to be taught to increase auditory attention, retention and processing ability during conversation — to facilitate better outcomes with socializing and retaining information when learning.
What are executive skills? Executive skills refer to the brain-based, cognitive processes that help us to regulate our behavior, make decisions and set and achieve goals. These skills include task initiation and follow through, planning/organization, working memory, performance monitoring, inhibition of impulses, and self-regulation. (Peg Dawson & Richard Guare — Smart but Scattered)
Services for Children
I naturally engage the child during play or other motivating activities that support language, social skills and communication. I encourage family participation and provide resources as well as tasks that can be implemented in the home environment to assist the child on generalizing therapy techniques in their natural environment.
Comprehensive assessments are provided assessing articulation as well as language depending on a child’s individual needs. Treatment is conducted one-on-one.
PROMPT © (Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets) is a technique that works well with children that have apraxia of speech. 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. Prompt Institute © For more information please check out: https://www.promptinstitute.com/page/FamiliesWIP
Voice treatment or coaching focuses on establishing optimal pitch patterns, vocal quality and loudness. It focuses on identifying and eliminating any maladaptive behaviors that may be contributing to the voice disorder and in identifying strategies to alleviate hyperfunction or tension in the absence of pathology (nodules, reflux, etc).
A person struggling with social skills may struggle with any one or many of the following:
- nonverbal communication (body language, facial expression),
- assertiveness/self-advocacy,
- initiation of conversation,
- pragmatics /social appropriateness (conforming with social norms/expectations within communication),
- verbal thought organization for expressing ideas in a thoughtful way,
- being able to be an empathetic and compassionate listener,
- having appropriate emotional responses
- using filters when speaking,
- knowing how to express one’s opinion tactfully and listen to another’s opinion
Deficits in this area frequently affect one’s ability to process information heard, it can cause increased difficulty with direction following, one’s ability to interpret sarcasm or jokes, it can affect auditory memory recall and auditory attention. People frequently also have difficulty with verbal thought organization — being able to form their thoughts and ideas and convey them in a meaningful concise and intelligible way to others.
Including articulation, word finding and verbal thought organization.
Strategies are taught to facilitate increased comprehension of information heard (social situations, school).
Guided treatment to facilitate improved function in the following areas:
- difficulty decoding language
- understanding the constructs of a narrative when writing
- difficulty with knowing how to plan, draft, reflect and revise when writing
- spelling errors
- forming grammatically incorrect sentences
- trouble organizing one’s thoughts in an organized manner in writing
- not knowing the grammatical/syntactic rules when writing
- Difficulty with word recognition
- Spelling difficulty/word decoding
- Difficulty with identifying the main idea in a given text
Strategies taught to assist in new learning of material (read and listened to), increase memory function and how to study for tests and be prepared for presentations. Sessions also can focus introducing or increasing effective note taking skills.
In the areas of organization, mental flexibility, metacognition (being able to evaluate own performance and make changes accordingly), goal setting, goal directed persistence, problem solving, decision making and time management.
Classes focusing on increasing awareness of Executive Skill Sets. Please email me to request a flyer.