Hello, dear readers and clients! To kick off our Bloom Speech Therapy blog, we believe it's important to start by providing a comprehensive explanation of what speech therapy entails.
Overview
Speech therapy, also known as speech-language pathology, is a field of healthcare that works to diagnose, treat, and prevent speech, language, and communication disorders and difficulties. A speech therapist is a highly trained professional who works with patients of all ages to develop and improve their ability to communicate effectively and clearly.
What areas do we target?
Speech therapists work on a variety of different skills depending on the client base, therapy location and their own clinical interests. Some areas include:
Articulation and phonology: Helping clients to produce clear and accurate speech sounds. Common speech sound errors that we see include lisps, substituting one sound for another (e.g. saying "tat" instead of "cat") and generally unclear or mumbled speech.
Fluency: Assessing and treating disfluencies, such as stuttering, to enhance communication and improve confidence.
Language: Working to develop language skills, including vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and comprehension.
Literacy: Working to improve reading, writing and spelling abilities.
Social communication: Helping clients feel more confident in social interactions. Some common areas clients may wish to target are joining in in group conversations, finding common interests and understanding subtle social cues.
Voice: Addressing issues related to voice production, such as hoarseness, vocal nodules, or a weak or breathy voice.
Swallowing and feeding: Identifying and treating disorders related to swallowing, chewing, and feeding, including dysphagia, oral-motor dysfunction, and sensory issues.
Where do we work?
Speech therapists can work in a variety of different settings, including clients' homes, schools/preschools, clinics, hospitals and even online. Bloom Speech Therapy is a mobile service, which allows us to come to you and deliver therapy in a place that is convenient and comfortable for you. For clients who live further away or prefer online communication, telehealth sessions via Zoom are also available.
Who do we work with?
This greatly depends on factors such as demand, available resources, location and clinician preference. For example, some clinics may only elect to see clients with voice concerns, others will be tailored to disabled clients, and others may only see adults. Setting up a more narrow client base allows clinicians to provide their clients with higher quality care.
This means that while we would love to be able to treat everyone and do accept the vast majority of referrals, the reality is that on some occasions, we may feel another service would be suited better to you.
At Bloom, we cover a wide range of practice areas but see mainly children and young adults. Please get in touch if interested for a free 15-minute consultation to see if we're the right fit for you!
What do speech therapy sessions look like?
Again, this depends on a number of factors. In most cases at Bloom, sessions will be 30-45 minutes and will include exercises, games or activities to target specific goals. We often also set home practice to do in between sessions, which greatly speeds up progress and reduces the amount of time you need to be in therapy! Goals are set in conjunction with the family/client so we can ensure they are the best suited to your situation.
Sessions are always meant to be fun and motivating. We take into account things that you/your child is interested in, as well as your personal priorities, to try make the sessions as beneficial as possible. Speech therapists pride themselves on being flexible and we enjoy the creativity involved in adapting each activity to be as engaging as possible for our clients.
I'm interested...what do I do next?
Are you located in Amsterdam or the surrounding areas? Is speech therapy something you feel you/your child could benefit from? We would love to chat! Please contact us for a free, no-obligation 15-minute call to chat about your concerns and goals. If we are the right fit for each other, we can book in an initial consultation and go from there.
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