As Better Hearing and Speech Month continues, learn about Outpatient Speech Therapy and the Augmentative Communication Clinic.The Outpatient Speech Therapy Program at Franciscan Children’s provides services to toddlers, school-aged, and adolescent children with a variety of communication and complex medical diagnoses. Therapists work with patients ages two to twenty-two to improve their abilities to understand language and express themselves clearly. The outpatient speech therapists serve patients who carry diagnoses of receptive and expressive language deficits and delays as well as articulation impairments and fluency disorders and complex feeding impairments. Concomitant disorders often include neurological impairment, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Cerebral Palsy (CP), and genetic syndromes. The speech therapist first sees a patient for an initial evaluation of their receptive and expressive language, articulation, and other related areas and determines if a patient should be seen for outpatient speech therapy. While some of our patients also receive speech therapy at school, outpatient therapists provide the caregiver with direct training with feedback and homework to ensure generalization of their speech and language skills to their home and community environments. The Outpatient Speech Therapy team includes therapists that have particular interests and specialize in a variety of areas including Neurodevelopmental Feeding, Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) and Motor Speech, ASD, fluency, American Sign Language (ASL), Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), and receptive and expressive language.The Augmentative Communication Clinic (AC Clinic) is a specialized outpatient clinic that evaluates and assists children with complex communication needs who may need AAC means or methods to assist in expressing themselves. AAC includes unaided means, such as gestures, body language, facial expressions, sign language, and aided means, such as low-tech photographs/picture symbols, mid-tech voice output devices, or high-tech speech-generating applications or dedicated devices. AAC is individualized and customized for each child to assist them in communicating in the most efficient and effective ways possible with the ability to expand and adjust as they learn, grow, and change.
The Outpatient Speech Therapy Program at Franciscan Children’s provides services to toddlers, school-aged, and adolescent children with a variety of communication and complex medical diagnoses. Therapists work with patients ages two to twenty-two to improve their abilities to understand language and express themselves clearly. The outpatient speech therapists serve patients who carry diagnoses of receptive and expressive language deficits and delays as well as articulation impairments and fluency disorders and complex feeding impairments. Concomitant disorders often include neurological impairment, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Cerebral Palsy (CP), and genetic syndromes. The speech therapist first sees a patient for an initial evaluation of their receptive and expressive language, articulation, and other related areas and determines if a patient should be seen for outpatient speech therapy. While some of our patients also receive speech therapy at school, outpatient therapists provide the caregiver with direct training with feedback and homework to ensure generalization of their speech and language skills to their home and community environments. The Outpatient Speech Therapy team includes therapists that have particular interests and specialize in a variety of areas including Neurodevelopmental Feeding, Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) and Motor Speech, ASD, fluency, American Sign Language (ASL), Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), and receptive and expressive language.The Augmentative Communication Clinic (AC Clinic) is a specialized outpatient clinic that evaluates and assists children with complex communication needs who may need AAC means or methods to assist in expressing themselves. AAC includes unaided means, such as gestures, body language, facial expressions, sign language, and aided means, such as low-tech photographs/picture symbols, mid-tech voice output devices, or high-tech speech-generating applications or dedicated devices. AAC is individualized and customized for each child to assist them in communicating in the most efficient and effective ways possible with the ability to expand and adjust as they learn, grow, and change.
