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Speech Therapy Services

Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE)
 

This service is for parents who disagree with the results of an evaluation conducted by the school system for their child or if they feel as if it was not thorough. Parents may seek a professional competent evaluator not employed by the school to provide their services for an evaluation.  

For more information about your right to obtain an IEE, please visit the ParentCenterHub for more details

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To request an IEE evaluation, please fill out our IEE Intake Form.

Dysphagia

Dysarthria is a speech disorder characterized of weak muscles due to brain injury. Speech sounds slurred and makes it difficult to be understood by others. Treatment focuses movements of the mouth, breathing, and clear sound production, and may include oral muscle exercises. 

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Some common causes of dysarthria include but are not limited to:

  • Stroke

  • Brain injury

  • Tumors

  • Parkinson's disease

  • Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS

  • Huntington's disease

  • Multiple sclerosis

  • Cerebral palsy

  • Muscular dystrophy

Apraxia

Apraxia of Speech is a motor speech disorder caused by brain injury in which a breakdown occurs in the motor planning of muscles movements. In other words, the breakdown is at the level of coordination and sequencing of the muscle movements to make sounds, words, phrases, or conversation. Treatment focuses on retraining the movement of the mouth muscles to correctly produce words and phrases. Severe cases may warrant alternative communication through the use of hand gestures, writing, pictures, and/or computer devices. 

 

Signs and symptoms of apraxia:

  • Have trouble imitating and saying sounds on your own. You may add new sounds, leave sounds out, or say sounds the wrong way.

  • Be able to say something the right way one time but the wrong way the next time.

  • Move your tongue and lips to get them into the right place as you try to say sounds. This is called groping.

  • Speak more slowly.

  • Be able to say things that you say all the time—like "Hello" or "How are you?"—without much trouble. This is called automatic speech.

  • Not be able to say any sounds at all. This may happen in severe cases.

Stuttering

Everyone "stutters" occasionally. We all have disfluencies such as "uh" or "you know" or we may even repeat a word, phrase or part of a word or a phrase.  These disfluencies are normal if they happen every once in a while. 

 

If you notice frequent disruptions in your speech, you may stutter. 

People who stutter may have the following disfluencies:

  • Blocks. This happens when you have a hard time getting a word out. You may pause for a long time or not be able to make a sound. For example, "I want a ...... cookie."

  • Prolongations. You may stretch a sound out for a long time, like cooooooooooookie.

  • Repetitions. You may repeat parts of words, like co-co-co-cookie.

 

Stuttering can change from day to day. You may have times when you are fluent and times when you stutter more. Stress or excitement can lead to more stuttering.

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Stuttering is more than just the blocks or repetitions in your speech. It can also make you tense your body or struggle to talk. Stuttering may get in the way of how you talk to others. You may want to hide your stuttering. So, you may avoid certain words or refuse to talk in some situations. For example, you may not want to talk on the phone if that makes you stutter more.

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If you avoid certain words or refuse to talk in some situations or feel like you want to hide your stuttering, it may be a good idea to work with a licensed and certified speech pathologist who can help overcome some of these barriers and teach you some fluency enhancing strategies. 

Swallowing and Chewing

Some children and adults can only tolerate certain textures of food, take either long period of time to finish their meals or swallow their food with minimal chewing. Other issues that can be present are choking, multiple drinks with meals, issues with breathing, difficulty with pushing food down, food feels stuck, and weight loss. 

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The muscles used for chewing and swallowing are the same ones used in speech, so it no surprised Speech Language Pathologist can help you or your child's feeding concerns. This includes strengthen the muscles in their mouth, lingual coordination, mastication, improving suction, nasal breathing, and more. Our Speech Language Pathologist will create a plan which aids you of understand and correct these issues. 

Articulation

 

Articulation is the movement of the lips, mouth, teeth, palate, tongue, and lungs to create speech sounds to produce words and sentences. This is a speech sound evaluation usually given to children and adults who are difficult to understand or have difficulty pronouncing certain sounds or for those who present with a tongue thrust which may impact their ability to produce certain sounds appropriately when speaking. If you have trouble with articulation, you may noticed one or more of the following:

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  1. Omissions/deletions— Occurs when sounds located in the initial, medial, or final position are omitted or deleted.

    1. For example: Ello for Hello or Pays for Plays or Ting for Thing

  2. Substitutions— Occurs when one or more sounds are substituted, which may result in loss of phonemic contrast.

    1. For example:  Thip for sip or Breaf for Breath

  3. Additions— Occurs when one or more extra sounds are added or inserted into a word

    1. For example: Buhlack for Black or Gahlue for Glue

  4. Distortions— Occurs when sounds are altered, changed, or produced in an unfamiliar way.

    1. For example: Shlip for Ship

  5. Syllable-level errors— Occurs when a weak syllable is deleted

    1. For example: Moo for Move or Fine for Find

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