Category Archives: Fluency

Chatterboxes Private Speech Therapy Services

No, We don’t Accept Insurance Directly for Speech Therapy:

See Why Parents & Kids Love It

Prior to her work at Chatterboxes, our founder, Megan Rozantes., M.S., CCC-SLP used to provide insurance-based speech therapy services.

She knows first hand the differences between Insurance-Based and Out-of-Network Speech Therapy. Based on her previous insurance-based experience as a speech therapist, Megan learned everything she didn’t want in a private speech therapy practice, and everything she did want!

Our practice’s mission is to shine the therapy spotlight directly on each child, every time. We’ve alleviated administrative duties, external challenges, red tape and time constraints for our therapists, so our therapists have the ability to focus intensely on each child’s needs and abilities. This is truly the cornerstone of Chatterboxes. Our support staff ensures that each speech-language-pathologist has the administrative support, time and resources she needs in order to maximize her clinical impact, allowing therapists to work smarter, not harder.

Now, more families are choosing the Out-of-Network and Private Pay model for Speech Therapy. Here’s Why:

Low Caseloads

Speech therapy services are in demand! The average Speech Therapist is helping so many more kids than is reasonable for her schedule. At Chatterboxes, our caseloads are 50% lower than industry average so that we are able to devote more time to each child’s therapy session each and every time.

What do lower caseloads mean? Plan, Prepare, Plan: We can provide twice the planning time and premium resources for rapid progress. It’s not uncommon for a Speech Therapist at Chatterboxes to plan for a 1-2 hours for a single 45 minute therapy session.

The more time our team puts in behind the scenes to prepare for each child’s visit, the better the therapy results. Why? because kids are engaged and it matches their needs. Know a lover of Paw Patrol or Red Matchbox Cars? We guarantee that our kids are super-motivated to participate, as we’ve thoughtfully crafted up a personalized session based on their interests every time.

Fresh, Top Talent

We provide speech therapy with a personal connection and friendship, creating trust from which progress is built. We are not a factory. We do not churn out visits. That means, our talented private speech therapists are bright-eyed and are honored to be providing services to each child! Our Speech-Therapists are eager to share their clinical knowledge via in-person conferences, phone talks, countless emails and text messages, highly customized home programs and family training to make a difference in each child’s abilities!

The Child’s Ecosystem & Skill Progression

In order for Speech Therapy to be effective, each child must be able to demonstrate skills outside of the therapy environment. Each child is surrounded by their own ecosystem. If the important adults in each child’s life are not trained in targeting speech therapy goals, progress will be affected. We train parents, teachers, grandparents, nannies, babysitters, etc in our vivid and clear home programs. Each adult has access to specific instructions and understands how to offer support to the child toward speech therapy goals. To keep everyone updated, we offer free speech therapy progress reports and phone conferences.

The Bottom Line

In Conclusion, at Chatterboxes, our team feels that Highly-Individualized speech therapy is not possible in an Insurance-accepted paradigm due to limitations on time and resources driven by financial constraints

Our mission at Chatterboxes is to increase each child’s ability to succeed with better speech therapy services and transform the process of speech therapy to be a highly-customized, delightful and effective experience for kids and parents.

Eager to learn more? Contact Heather for your Complimentary Initial Consultation at 617-969-8255, or visit us at www.TeamChatterboxes.com

Proudly Serving Massachusetts via our two easy access locations:

35 Bedford Street Lexington MA 02420

10 Langley Road, Newton Centre 02459

Fluency Strategies for Parents

By Chatterboxes

The way you speak to your child can have an impact on his speech and stuttering behavior. Children who stutter tend to stutter more in stressful speaking situations or when high speaking demands are placed on them. Parents can decrease the communication demands placed on their child by modifying the way they speak to them.

Strategies include:

Speak slowly
Use a soft voice
Pause frequently in conversation
Use simple vocabulary and grammar
Avoid asking lots of questions
Be patient, don’t interrupt your child or finish his sentences for him
Allow time to pass between speaking turns, don’t rush your child
Maintain natural eye contact, even in a moment of stuttering
Avoid criticizing speech or using language like “slow down!” or “You’re taking too fast!”
Talk openly about stuttering with your child and acknowledge that it can be difficult. You can use language like “sometimes speech is bumpy” or “that was a hard one.”
Listening Time: Set aside 15 minutes of time each day that your child can speak to you without time pressure. Your role is to listen to your child.
Home Program: It is very important to set aside time each day to practice the strategies learned during each therapy session. Set up a period of time each day that you will practice with your child!

Private Speech Therapy vs School-Based Speech Therapy: How do they Stack Up? (Part 1 of 2)

By Chatterboxes

“Should I Stay with School Therapy or Should I go Private?”

Alot of parents are asking themselves this question at some point during their child’s speech therapy care. Parents may struggle to see progress with school speech therapy, Yet, going to a Private Practice entails an increased cost when compared with school-based therapy.

Training

Both a Private Speech-Language Pathologist and a School Based Speech Pathologist who are “CCC-SLP Certified” have the same level of educational training after all, so how can there be a difference in services?

Here’s why: The school SLP must work under the confines of her school district’s regulations. Due to the intense need for speech & language services at school, the Speech-Pathologist practicing in a Public School typically faces an ever-increasing set of demands during the school year; thus she’s presented with an expanded scope of practice. School SLP workload responsibilities include:

Therapy Timeline

By law, in Massachusetts, once the public school has received parental consent, the school has 30 working days to perform an Evaluation. Once the testing is complete, a team meeting must be scheduled within 45 school working days.

Time-Out. 75 Days? That’s a substantial period of ‘waiting’ time in a child’s academic school year.

In a private setting, an evaluation is typically scheduled within 1 week. The report is then produced in 7-10 days and therapy often begins the week after the evaluation.

Eligibility & Qualification

Your child needs to meet state issued eligibility standards to qualify for speech/language services in the Public Schools. In Massachusetts, “To be eligible for special education services, a student must first be found to have a disability which is causal to an inability to make effective progress in school.”

In a Private Setting, your child does not need to be ‘eligible’ for our services. A parent calls with concern and we arrange for an Evaluation during a preferred time in your schedule.

The Evaluation Process

In a school-based testing situation, the SLP is confined to measuring performance solely based on standardized test results.

A private evaluation entails standardized testing (like in the schools), yet the Private Therapist has the discretion to include her Clinical Impressions. She has the ability to consider that your child may have had an off-day, or that he can exhibit a particular skill in play, but not during testing. You can also weigh in with your thoughts on your child’s performance, as chances are, you’re in the room.

With your parental consent, the private SLP can share her immediate impressions of your child’s evaluation results upon completion of the evaluation.

Therapeutic Environment

We all know that kids make progress when they are engaged and having fun. In a child- therapy situation one of the keys to success is the clinical environment. Do you know where your child’s school-therapy takes place? A hallway? A noisy classroom? An office? Background noise is distracting.

Interested in learning more about us? Visit: www.TeamChatterboxes.com

Private vs School Based Speech Therapy: How do they Compare? (Part 2 of 2)

By Chatterboxes

Part 2 of 2

Three’s a Crowd & Four’s a Party

It’s most likely that if your child is receiving speech therapy services at school, they are doing so in a group setting. Kids in the group may or may not be targeting similar therapeutic goals.

Imagine hearing, “Students: I’ll be modeling ‘How to Play Cards’ this session, but one of you will learn Gin Rummy, the other Poker, and Timmy, you’ll learn to play Hearts.”

Private speech sessions are typically one-to-one; whereas 100% of the SLP’s attention is focused on your child the entire 45-60 minute session. Home Programs, like these, are included with each session. After the session, parents are walked through the homework, and given suggestions on how to implement strategies for increased carryover of newly learned skills.

Caseloads & Workloads

It wouldn’t be uncommon for a School-Based SLP to provide services to 95 children in one week. At Chatterboxes, a full-time therapist provides 25-30 visits per week on average.

Aside from designing and executing therapy to her caseload of 95 students, the School-Based SLP is also responsible for attending IEP meetings and writing and revising IEP Reports for each student. High caseloads reduce a therapist’s availability of time for planning.

Whole Child Approach

At Chatterboxes, our private model gives us the ability for our Speech-Pathologists to carry lower caseloads while allowing for the therapist to treat the ‘whole child.”

At Chatterboxes, we incorporate a child’s daily hobbies and interests, such as home-life, siblings, family happenings, into the child’s Weekly Therapy and Home Program.

With parental permission, we involve the child’s teachers, babysitters, or siblings into our Therapy Program. Ensuring that all the people involved in the child’s life are educated on his or her goals and implementing strategies consistently provides the support a child needs to make progress.

While making therapy meaningful and relevant to a child’s interest and life from a subject perspective, our private-based model to treat the Whole-Child allows for a child to experience increased progress & carryover newly learned skills outside the therapy environment.

_______________________________

“To the doctor, the child is a typhoid patient; to the playground supervisor, a first

baseman; to the teacher, a learner of arithmetic. At times, he may be different things to

each of these specialists, but too rarely is he a whole child to any of them.”

—From the 1930 report of the White House

Conference on Children and Youth

Interested in learning more about our practice? Visit: www.TeamChatterboxes.com