We specialize in providing exceptional therapy for children and adolescents with speech and communication difficulties. Give us a call and see how we can help your child in areas such as articulation/intelligibility, vocabulary use or understanding, grammar, language comprehension, fluency/stuttering, voice/resonance, Augmentative & Alternative Communication, and Cognitive-Communication skills.
Inspire supports adult patients with acquired communication and swallowing difficulties. This may include those with stroke, brain injury, acquired progressive disorders, head and neck cancers, dementia, voice disorders. We offer assessment, specific advice and targeted therapy tailored to the patient's needs. Therapy is provided in the
Inspire supports adult patients with acquired communication and swallowing difficulties. This may include those with stroke, brain injury, acquired progressive disorders, head and neck cancers, dementia, voice disorders. We offer assessment, specific advice and targeted therapy tailored to the patient's needs. Therapy is provided in the patient's home and involving caregivers and other paraprofessionals including doctors, occupational therapists, nurses and dietitians.
Our therapists provide opportunities for social learning by exploring core Social Thinking teachings and related social skills. Our lessons, whether in a group or individual setting, are driven by the needs of our patients. We take a comprehensive look at each patient’s social cognitive needs as well as their age and developmental level and develop lessons specific to them.
We are proud to be part of the technological rise as we now offer Online Virtual Speech Therapy! Inspire provides confidential web-based services which connect those in need of speech/language therapy with licensed Speech-Language Pathologists and Speech-Language Pathologist Assistants for live, one-on-one or group, online therapy sessions. Sessions are convenient, secure, affordable, and effective.
Inspire is dedicated to offering unique, effective therapy for students in all grades throughout the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys. Our highly trained therapists provide consultation, assessment and therapy. Is your school in need of a speech therapist? Give us a call!
It’s not the family doctor making house calls anymore! Inspire offers in-home adult and geriatric services. We offer intervention for cognition, swallowing, language, speech, stuttering, reading and writing as part of restorative therapies following a traumatic medical event or compensatory therapy needs due to natural aging through your home health agency.
It’s very common for young children to make mistakes in their speech when they’re first learning to talk. Kids often substitute one sound for another, such as saying tat when they mean cat. Another common mistake is to omit a sound, such as asking for a poon when they really want a spoon.
Sometimes children will significantly shorten words to make them easier to pronounce. For example, many of my younger students ask to play on my ’puter when they want computer time. This is all part of the process of kids communicating their needs while they’re still learning to imitate the sounds they’re hearing.
Usually, as kids get older they stop making these errors. By age 8, kids are expected to make all their speech sounds correctly and to be understandable by a wide variety of people.
So why do some kids have difficulty with this while others find it so easy? In most cases, we just don’t know. But researchers have identified some factors that increase the chances of having different types of speech issues:
Articulation disorder: Kids with this issue have difficulty with the mouth and tongue movements needed to make certain speech sounds. Their speech errors include substituting one sound for another. For example, they may say wabbit instead of rabbit. They may distort a sound, such as lisping when they say s. Or they may add or delete sounds in different words.
We don’t always know what causes articulation problems. But some medical conditions make articulation difficulties more likely. These include hearing loss or frequent ear infections, illness, orthodontic issues and genetic conditions such as Down syndrome.
Phonological disorder: Kids with this issue make errors on whole groups or “classes” of sounds. For example, they might replace all sounds made in the back of the mouth (like k and g) with sounds made in the front of the mouth (like t and d).
Children might not notice they’re saying tat instead of cat or understand why the difference matters. Frequent ear infections, illness and genetic syndromes are considered risk factors for this disorder.
Childhood apraxia of speech: Kids with this type of pronunciation problem can be very hard to understand. They might not be able to say more than a few speech sounds. And they might appear to struggle physically when they are trying to get words out.
Apraxia of speech is considered a motor planning disorder.
This means that there’s a disconnect between what the brain wants to say and the brain’s ability to get the lips, tongue and jaw moving correctly to make those sounds.
Learn more at Understood.Org
