Better Speech and Hearing Month at Franciscan Children’s

In celebration of Better Hearing and Speech Month, check out the services provided by our Speech-Language and Hearing Department at Franciscan Children’s.

“More than forty-eight million people in the U.S. experience some degree of hearing loss, and one in ten Americans have some type of communication disorder.” – Advanced Hearing Center

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) work to prevent, assess, diagnose, and treat speech, language, social communication, cognitive-communication and swallowing disorders. The outpatient Speech-Language and Hearing (SLH) Department at FC provides evaluation and treatment services to individuals who present with a wide-range of communication needs and abilities.

In outpatient speech-language therapy, clinicians work with children who range in age from toddlers to young adults. Sessions are individualized to help facilitate functional communication across all of the individual’s environments and communication partners. When individuals present with deficits that impact their ability to communicate, our SLPs provide therapies that work to improve these areas and/or provide strategies and caregiver training to increase their accessibility to communication. Our SLPs design creative, fun and motivating activities to work on articulation, motor speech, pre-linguistic skills, language comprehension, expressive language and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, these services moved to a telemedicine format. While our in-person services have now resumed, several outpatients continue to receive services this way.

Our SLPs also coordinate specialty clinics such as an Augmentative Communication (AC) Clinic, provide services to students in Kennedy Day School and to individuals on our medical units, and sit as part of multi-disciplinary teams. Clinicians collaborate with specialists across several departments including occupational therapy, physical therapy and behavioral health to provide the most well-rounded and effective care to their patients and families.

The SLPs at Franciscan Children’s are creative, hardworking individuals who are passionate about providing speech-language and hearing services to patients in need, so every kid can!