Like many of our families, Luke comes from a rural area of NSW, where he lived too far away to attend regular speech therapy services. Using our Telecare services, he can access regular therapy at his school.
Luke has a family history of speech and language difficulties. He had not accessed speech therapy services for many years when he was referred to RFW Telecare by his class teacher at age nine. Luke’s teacher reported that his speech difficulties meant that he did not have the confidence to speak in class.
Luke attended eight Telecare Speech Therapy sessions with the support of a teacher’s aide, who completed a follow up session with him each week. The focus of his sessions was his production of speech sounds, particularly the transitions between sounds and syllables in multisyllabic words, and his ability to listen to syllables and sounds within words. Words from his classroom, texts and curriculum were used.
He was a quiet, hard worker in sessions, completing all of the activities to the best of his abilities, often with a small, cheeky smile. He particularly responded well to use of positive reinforcement and curriculum based therapy activities during the sessions.
By the end of the term, Luke was able to 100% correctly segment words into syllables.
Luke’s skills and confidence grew over the term. By the end of term Luke was able to correctly say 80% of new multisyllabic words. He was able to confidently give a speech in class and complete a five minute voiceover fora class project. His class teacher and teacher’s aide were very happy with his progress and sent emails outlining their excitement at him being about to complete classroom speaking activities with confidence and good skills.
RFW has made the decision to de-identify all clinical case studies, ensuring the privacy of our clients and their families.
This case study is representative of our demographic of children aged 2-12 who live in country areas.