NACD Newsletter: Volume 1, Issue 13

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A Message from Bob

Some of the areas that I am particularly concerned about are issues relating to speech and language development, as well as feeding and oral motor issues. We have two speech pathologists on staff to address these issues. Lori Riggs, the Director of our Center for Speech and Sound, is really the best of the best in her field. In addition to her extensive training and experience, she is also one of the developers of The Listening Program. Because of her expertise we often prefer to have her work directly with the families on these issues.

One of my areas of frustration is how often families underutilize the services we offer them, and of those services, those provided by Lori and the Center for Speech and Sound are often at the top of the list. Often families are employing outside speech therapists who have much less training and much less experience. In that we have been pioneers in the areas of listening, tonal processing, central auditory processing, and auditory sequential processing, it is virtually impossible to find anyone outside of NACD who has even a fraction of the expertise. Of further concern is that in order for us to coordinate our efforts in designing a comprehensive program, it becomes very difficult when outside therapists are working with the child in isolation. Coordinating our efforts is often critical if we are going to assist you in achieving your goals for your child. As we evaluate your child and work with you, if we see a need for direct intervention from an outside therapist, we will not hesitate to recommend this to you.

Services available through the Center for Speech and Sound include:

Speech/Oral motor consult: For this either your evaluator will be able to obtain a video of your child during your evaluation, or he/she may ask you to make a video at home. After Lori views the video, she will design a program to address pertinent areas of speech, language, voice, fluency, oral motor function, or feeding.

Intensive Speech Intervention: For an intensive program you will have a phone consultation with Lori after she views your video. You will also have follow-up phone reviews with her every two weeks to update and modify your program as needed.

Auditory programs: We continue to use The Listening Program as our primary auditory program. Lori will direct you in its use and supervise your use of the program. In addition, we have some exciting new developments in the works that will be available to you soon.

In the past we provided many of the services of the Center for Speech and Sound as part of your NACD membership and charged for others. The charges helped us cover some of our development and staffing costs. We realize that the present economic environment is making it difficult for some of you to incur any additional costs, but I want you to take advantage of the expertise that we have worked so hard to create. So, as of today we are going to eliminate all additional charges for consultations and programming from our Center for Speech and Sound.

We want to see your children do well. We want to help. So please take advantage of everything we have to provide for you. While I'm at it- you all need to be calling us more often. We can't help with problems unless we know they exist. Remember as I have told all of you in the past, if you have a problem-call; if something changes- call; if something isn't changing -call; and if you're having a tough day and just need to talk about it-call. For you and your child to succeed, we need to communicate and work together to help all of our children be all they can be.

Bob

P.S. By the way, if any of you folks are in a position to help, NACD welcomes your tax- deductible donations.