Speech and Language Services
The Hearing and Speech Clinic at Children's Mercy provides evaluations, consultations, parent counseling and therapies for children with communication or feeding and swallowing disorders.
The health care providers you will work with are called speech-language pathologists (sometimes shortened to speech pathologists or SLPs). Speech pathologists help children develop communication skills and work with problems with speech, language, cognitive communication, voice, swallowing and fluency.
After your initial evaluation, your care team will work with you to create a plan for your child’s unique needs. Together, the speech-language pathologist and your family will work towards your child’s goals in therapy sessions and through practice at home.
Evaluation
Speech-language pathologists at the Hearing and Speech Clinic do many evaluations, including:
- Speech and language evaluation (in English and Spanish)
- Chronic cough/paradoxic vocal cord dysfunction evaluation
- Feeding evaluation
- Reading/dyslexia evaluation
A speech-language evaluation helps identify and address concerns about your child’s communication skills.
Feeding therapy is provided by a licensed speech pathologist. They will try strategies and techniques to help increase feeding/swallowing skills.
Voice therapy helps children with vocal cord dysfunction or those who are retraining their voice to better match their gender identity.
Conditions
- Academic language disorders
- Apraxia of speech
- Autism spectrum disorders (ASD)
- Brain injury
- Cognitive disorders
- Developmental delay
- Dyslexia
- Fluency disorders (stuttering)
- Hearing loss
- Language disorders (expressive, pragmatic, receptive)
- Orofacial myofunctional disorders
- Pediatric head trauma or neurological injuries
- Resonance and other conditions associated with cleft palate or velopharyngeal dysfunction
- Swallowing
- Voice disorders