Hello! I am Shelby Bedwell, M.S. CCC-SLP, and for the last seven months, I have had the honor of serving as a Speech-Language Pathologist for the Esperanza Children’s Therapy Clinic. As an SLP, it has been incredibly rewarding to be a part of a child and family’s therapy experience.
There are many benefits our clients can expect when beginning their therapy journey. Our Esperanza Speech-Language Pathologists will initially develop a plan to strengthen areas of communication difficulties. We cover a wide variety of communication disorders including: articulation (speech sounds), receptive/expressive language (how we understand language and how we express language), fluency, and functional communication, to name a few. If a client is having difficulty with their articulation, we will work towards accurately producing speech sound targets to encourage intelligibility. It may seem tedious to practice words over and over, but we are training our speech system to reliably and accurately produce the sounds that are challenging for our clients. The more we practice making the sound correctly, the easier it becomes!
Therapy will look different for every family and every client. Our goal is to help our clients communicate by identifying areas of need, providing intervention to learn strategies and practice communication skills, and encourage families to utilize strategies at home to continue seeing growth outside of therapy.
We also understand that, for many of our families, this is their first experience with Speech-Langage Therapy. This means they may not be familiar with the incredible difference this type of therapy can provide, and might also experience different feelings and emotions. If this is their first child receiving services, there might be a fear of the unknown or they may be feeling overwhelmed with all of the changes that are happening. They might also experience a sense of relief that they are finally getting the help they need. When starting the therapy process, we will make sure we work hard to learn about their child to provide the best care possible and utilize functional activities to support their communication goals.
Additionally, from my experience, every clinician I have met at Aprendamos has such care for their families and clients. They are dedicated to working together to understand what a family’s needs are and work alongside them to develop a plan to reach their goals. Because of this, I look forward to coming to work to provide therapy to my families, and I am incredibly proud of the team I work with. Whenever our clients’ meet their goals and graduate from therapy, it is such an awesome achievement! While it is bittersweet and we always miss clients that have graduated, it is also amazing to think of how much work they have put in to meet their goals.
Each and every client is such a blessing to serve, and we are grateful to be a part of your life and your therapy story.
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