Hello and welcome to our blog! We thought it would be a good idea to have our first post be an introduction to our company and our services. My name is Jen Vice and I am a co-owner and Speech-Language Pathologist at Interactive Therapy Services, PLLC. I received my master’s degree in Communication Disorders from Marshall University in 2016. Following graduation, I worked in local Ohio schools with children preschool through high school level. During my years working in the school system I started to notice a common problem among the families I served. The caregivers would seek speech services in the summer months and would be placed on long wait lists at local outpatient centers. Inevitably, their child would not be served during the summer due to the high demand. Sending home summer speech 'homework' and pointers for parents just wasn't enough. The students would not make the same growth and progress as they would if seen weekly by an SLP throughout the summer.
My business partner, Melanie Asbury, also received her master’s degree in Communication Disorders from Marshall University in 2016. After graduation, she began her career at a local pediatric outpatient center where she worked with children 18 and under. We both witnessed how the long wait lists at the outpatient hospitals were frustrating parents and delaying services needed by the patients. We came together and decided we could offer our services to ease some of the stress and dissatisfaction family members were experiencing while waiting on services for their loved ones.
As we planned out what we wanted our business to look like we both knew one aspect would be home health. This allows us to go into the patient’s natural environment to deliver services. Home visits also enable us to work hand in hand with the families of our patients by giving them guidance on how to work with their child throughout the week. We believe involving the families into the therapy process and aiding them with home programming materials greatly increases successful outcomes of therapy.
We decided to expand our business and begin working under Kentucky’s First Steps program due to our mutual interest and belief that early intervention has a tremendous effect on preventing further, more complicated speech and language problems later in life. According to the American-Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the goal of early intervention “is to lessen the effects of a disability or delay by addressing identified needs of young children across five developmental areas:
● Cognitive development
● Communication development
● Physical development, including vision and hearing
● Social or emotional development
● Adaptive development “(Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA], 2004)”
Children who receive early intervention services are more likely to have successful and effective speech and language skills than children who are told to apply the ‘wait and see’ method of delaying services to see if the children will develop the needed skills without intervention services. Our main goal is to aid patients in achieving their full potential by promoting independence and building patient’s self-esteem.
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