Sara’s Garden Adds Speech-Language Pathology

Sara’s Garden is excited to announce that we are once again broadening our clinical service offerings to include Speech-Language Pathology (Speech Therapy)! In expanding our provision of services, Sara’s Garden has recently welcomed Michelle Nagle, M.Ed. CCC/SLP to our team of specialists to complement and enhance our program of intervention services.

What is Speech-Language Pathology? Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) work to prevent, assess, diagnose, and treat speech, language, social communication, cognitive-communication, and swallowing disorders in children and adults of all ages.

• Speech disorders occur when a person has difficulty producing speech sounds correctly or fluently (e.g., stuttering is a form of disfluency) or has problems with his or her voice or resonance.
• Language disorders occur when a person has trouble understanding others (receptive language), or sharing thoughts, ideas, and feelings (expressive language). Language disorders may be spoken or written and may involve the form (phonology, morphology, syntax), content (semantics), and/or use (pragmatics) of language in functional and socially appropriate ways.
• Social communication disorders occur when a person has trouble with the social use of verbal and nonverbal communication. These disorders may include problems (a) communicating for social purposes (e.g., greeting, commenting, asking questions), (b) talking in different ways to suit the listener and setting, and (c) following rules for conversation and story-telling. All individuals with autism spectrum disorder have social communication problems. Social communication disorders are also found individuals with other conditions, such as traumatic brain injury.
• Cognitive-communication disorders include problems organizing thoughts, paying attention, remembering, planning, and/or problem-solving. These disorders usually happen as a result of a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or dementia, although they can be congenital.
• Swallowing disorders (dysphagia) are feeding and swallowing difficulties, which may follow an illness, surgery, stroke, or injury.

Many conditions, including cerebral palsy, autism, hearing loss, developmental delays, may cause difficulty with speech and language development. Some children may not understand language. Some children may understand language but be unable to communicate effectively due to difficulty with speech.  Sometimes children experience challenges in other areas of communication, such as hand gestures and facial expressions.

Speech therapy is a clinical program aimed at improving speech and language skills and oral motor abilities. Children who are able to talk may work on making their speech clearer, or on building their language skills by learning new words, learning to speak in sentences, or improving their listening skills. Children who cannot talk may learn sign language, or how to use special equipment such as a computer that speaks for them. Children who talk but have challenges with more discreet communication issues such as facial expression or gestural language use, may work on these areas of communication.

Sara’s Garden is committed to providing the highest quality speech, language, and communication services in a meaningful and fun learning environment. We are dedicated to working collaboratively with family members to ensure their loved ones learn and progress to their full communicative potential.

We believe that early intervention is crucial to the development of communication skills and that every client should be viewed individually and treated uniquely according to their learning style and communication needs. Family support is crucial to a child’s learning and parents should be involved in the development, implementation, and evaluation of their child’s needs and progress. Our goal is to collaborate with families to better serve the needs of you and/or your child. At Sara’s Garden, we offer an individualized approach to assessing a client’s functional capacity and customizing interventions to achieve family-centered goals. This is achieved through supporting a person to learn new skills, modifying a task or activity and/or making changes to one’s environment, to enhance their level of functioning and safety and achieve even greater independence.

For further information on Speech-Language Pathology (Speech Therapy) services at Sara’s Garden and New Horizons Academy please contact Dave Burkholder at 419.335.7272 or via email at davidb@sarasgarden.org.