Evaluations and Treatment
Providing the tools for meaningful communication
Barnes Speech and Language Services offers comprehensive evaluations and individualized treatment plans addressing a variety of areas, including speech, language, and social communication. We welcome participation from the entire family. Parents are invited and encouraged to participate in therapy sessions as often as they wish.
Evaluations
Evaluations are scheduled shortly after the initial consultation and often include the following:
Parent/caregiver interview
Observation
Speech/language sample
Informal assessment through therapist-patient interaction
Formal assessment when appropriate
Evaluations allow us to form a comprehensive picture of each client’s speech and language skills so that we can develop an individualized treatment plan based on the client’s needs.
Treatment
We develop individualized treatment plans that meet the needs and expectations of our clients and their families and address current goals. Our treatment sessions are:
Client-centered
Play-based
Fun and engaging
We provide activities for families to work on at home to improve carryover, as well as parent/caregiver coaching on tips and strategies to encourage communication growth and progress.
Here are some of the skills we work on with our clients…
Speech Therapy
SPEECH SOUND DISORDERS ~ CHILDHOOD APRAXIA OF SPEECH ~ STUTTERING
We work with children who have difficulty saying certain sounds or groups of sounds, have difficulty getting words out, or have difficulty speaking fluently. Speech therapy addresses age-appropriate skills that may focus on any of the following:
developing new age-appropriate speech sounds
improving accuracy of current speech sounds
addressing motor planning difficulties affecting speech production
increasing overall intelligibility
facilitating fluent speech through implementation of strategies
Language Therapy
RECEPTIVE & EXPRESSIVE LANGUAGE DELAYS/DISORDERS ~ GESTALT LANGUAGE PROCESSORS
Children who do not consistently follow directions, have limited receptive and expressive vocabularies, do not combine a variety of words, or who have difficulty producing grammatical utterances, would likely benefit from skilled language therapy. Language therapy may address any number of the following:
increasing size of vocabulary
facilitating understanding of a variety of directives and requests
increasing understanding and number of semantic relationships (related concepts/meanings)
facilitating use of various word structures (e.g., present progressive ‘-ing’, possessive ‘s’, plural ‘s’, etc.)
increasing sentence length and complexity
increasing variety of sentence types
We also provide therapy based on the Natural Language Aquisition (NLA) framework for those children who are gestalt language processors and exhibit delayed echolalia. This approach would look different from traditional language therapy in that it would focus on:
modeling new scripts/gestalts for the child to use
facilitating the breakdown of scripts into smaller more useable phrases and words
facilitating the use of self-generated grammar
Social Communication
SOCIAL INTERACTION ~ SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING ~ PRAGMATICS ~ LANGUAGE PROCESSING
Children who have difficulty maintaining joint attention, using age-appropriate play skills, reading facial expressions, responding to emotions, self-advocating, or engaging in age-appropriate conversations, will likely benefit from therapy. Therapy to address social communication addresses age-appropriate skills focusing on any of the following:
improving understanding and interaction in social situations
establishing joint attention
improving play skills
improving social-emotional awareness
developing self-advocacy skills
Service Locations
In-home speech therapy in Livingston, Oakland, and Genesee Counties within 25 miles of Hartland, MI. Telehealth services available anywhere in the states of Michigan and Florida.
For any questions regarding services provided, scheduling an appointment or billing please contact us.
