Therapy Services
"Communication is the Essence of Human Life"
- Janice Light
Feeding/Swallowing Therapy
Infants may have difficulty coordinating sucking, swallowing and breathing. This difficulty significantly impacts a child’s ability to eat by traditional means such as bottle or breast feeding. Infants many have difficulty transitioning from bottles to baby foods and a toddler may have difficulty transitioning from baby foods to more complex food textures. A speech therapist works to promote safe feeding experiences, determine the optimum feeding methods and techniques to maximize swallowing safety and feeding efficiency, and attain age-appropriate eating skills in the most normal setting and manner possible.
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Adults also experience swallowing difficulties known as dysphagia. A speech therapist identifies normal and abnormal swallowing anatomy and physiology and provides appropriate treatment and recommendations.
Speech and Articulation Therapy
Is your child difficult to understand? Speech sound disorders is an umbrella term referring to any difficulty or combination of difficulties with perception, motor production, or phonological representation of speech sounds and speech segments. A speech therapist plays a central role in the screening, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of persons with speech sound disorders.
Myofunctional Therapy
Myofunctional Therapy is the assessment and treatment of the muscles of the face and how improper use of the muscles impacts dentition, speech, chewing, and swallowing. Myofunctional therapy helps to strengthen the muscles to work together properly so that they are balanced.
Facial muscle imbalance can result in problems including jaw pain, poor digestion, nasal congestion, lisps, chronic ear infections, headaches, poor posture, poor sleep, and more.
Myofunctional therapy targets eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping better. The four main goals of therapy are:
Nasal breathing
Tongue in proper resting position
Mouth closed and lips sealed
Proper swallowing
*This type of therapy is appropriate for adults and children
Cognitive Rehabilitation
It is common to have communication problems after a stroke. Having a stroke may make it difficult to speak, understand what others are saying, and find the right words to use. This condition is known as aphasia. Depending on an individual’s unique set of symptoms, impairments may result in loss of ability to use communication as a tool for life participation (Threats & Worrall, 2004). Aphasia can co-occur with other speech and language impairments such as dysarthria and apraxia of speech.
Treatment is individualized to address the specific areas of need identified during assessment, including specific goals identified by the person with aphasia and his or her family.