Therapy Services

AAC Therapy

 

AAC therapy involves teaching the client how to use an alternative means of communicating, either through their own body, or through a device, in order to compensate for severe expressive communication disorders. Training the client to become skilled users of an aided device, (low or high-tech) can help the client to use the AAC system more efficiently and competently.

 

Acquired Brain Injury Therapy

After completing an assessment to determine what areas need improvement, the speech-language pathologist will typically focus on cognitive retraining.

What is Cognitive Retraining?

Cognitive retraining is a therapeutic strategy that a speech language pathologist uses to improve or restore a person's skills in the areas of attention, memory, organizing, reasoning and understanding, problem-solving, decision making, and higher-level cognitive abilities. These skills are all interrelated. Cognitive retraining is one aspect of cognitive rehabilitation, and utilizes a comprehensive approach to restoring such skills after brain injury or other disability.

Fluency Therapy

 

Dysfluency can affect people of all ages.

 

Stuttering Therapy

 

Most treatment programs for people who stutter are "behavioural." They are designed to teach the person specific skills or behaviours that lead to improved oral communication. For instance, many SLPs teach people who stutter to control and/or monitor the rate at which they speak. In addition, these individuals may learn to start saying words in a slightly slower and less physically tense manner. They may also be taught how to control or monitor their breathing. When learning to control speech rate, people often begin by practicing smooth, fluent speech, at rates that are much slower than typical speech, using short phrases and sentences. Over time, people who stutter learn to produce fluent, natural sounding speech at faster rates, in longer sentences, and in more challenging situations. "Follow-up" or "maintenance" sessions are often necessary after completion of formal intervention to prevent relapse.

 

Cluttering Therapy

 

Since people who clutter are unaware of their delivery of speech, a large component to cluttering therapy involves monitoring their own speech.  In addition, simply asking the client to "slow down" is not an effective means of reducing their rate of speech. Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF) has also been proven to be a useful tool in cluttering therapy, depending on the individual. Using clear articulation, reducing dysfluencies, speaking naturally, and using acceptable and organized language, are the typically the main focus of therapy. Establishing and maintaining a slower speech rate, and generalizing these learned behaviours outside the therapy room is often very difficult. 

 

Language Therapy

ACCRC provides language therapy to individuals of all ages with a variety of diagnoses. Language therapy may target receptive language, (comprehension) expressive language, (expression) or both. Language goals generally address:

• Semantics or vocabulary development
• Grammar
• Syntax
• Appropriate use of language
• Processing of spoken language (i.e., recall of information, following directions, question processing)
• Higher-level cognitive-linguistic skills (i.e., categorization, comparing/contrasting, inferencing, understanding, and using humour)

Speech Therapy

Clients of all ages are treated for disorders of articulation arising from:

Voice Therapy

Voice therapy is provided for clients of all ages who demonstrate disordered vocal quality, pitch, volume, and/or resonance.

Prior to commencing voice evaluation and therapy, an evaluation by an Ear Nose and Throat Specialist (ENT) is required to rule out the presence of any pathology that may be negatively impacted by therapy techniques.

 

References:

 

American Speech-Language Hearing Association