Clinical Services: Speech and Language

At Vanguard we strive to give children the strategies and skills needed to function within society's framework and within their educational setting. Our Pre-K Program focuses on play based therapy and pre-academic speech and language skills. In the Elementary Program we continue pre-academic skills and begin to focus on academic skills as well as introducing more specific receptive and expressive fundamental language areas and concentrate on all areas of speech intelligibility. As the students get older we accompany them in vocational settings both on and off campus and monitor them and provide models for successful communication.

An Individual Education Plan (IEP) is developed based on observations in the classroom and other school environments, consultation with teachers, parents, assistants and specialists, and formal and informal testing. Types of therapeutic environments include individual, small group, classroom, co-treatment with other specialists, or any combination of the above. The primary goal is the generalization of appropriate speech/language skills into the educational and vocational setting. The speech therapists at Vanguard have the advantage of being actively involved in the child's entire day, including bus time, field trips, lunch, special activities and on-site job training. Well-trained, experienced speech therapists work to design programs in the following areas:

• Voice
• Fluency
• Language auditory processing, listening, and memory organizational skills
• Social communication
• Expressive language
• Compensatory strategies
• Assistive technology
• Co-treating/interdisciplinary collaboration