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Seeking aid for speech therapy at PS?


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I know we have a right to seek help in the public schools in regards to speech therapy. I just have no idea how to go about it.

 

My DS is deaf in one ear, and when he was younger he had trouble pronouncing certain syllables. He took speech therapy which completely corrected it, and his speech was fine up until about 6 months ago.

 

Now, though, he has a lisp again. It isn't the same as he had before, so DH doesn't think it is something that needs speech therapy, and he just points it out to DS every time he does it to try to get him to stop. For some reason, DH seems to think DS is just trying to be cute, and that he is doing it on purpose. DS doesn't do it EVERY time, but he does it often enough. I do think that it is something that we should at least ask a speech therapist about to see what they think. I have no idea if they can help, but I don't think it would hurt to ask, right?

 

It is his "S", especially when it is at the end of a word, but sometimes at the beginning also. He slurs the sound out. Even when DH points it out, DS tries to correct himself but he can't get it to go away completely.

 

We live in Missouri, and here we can choose for DS to attend any school that is inside the county we live in. Does anyone know if that means we can choose any school to seek help from, or are we forced to seek help from the school closest to us (the one DS used to attend)? What should I say when I call them?

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My ds just started speech at the public school. I had to call the administrator over special ed. I'm not sure what his exact title is but I called him and he had the speech therapist call me. I then had to meet with her and have an IEP meeting at the school.

 

I was able to get it done but there is alot of paperwork and administrative hoops to jump through. The therapist is really nice but I could tell she was aggravated at the administrative work getting us going. They have to do it, though.

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My girls are both hard of hearing and we get services from the school district - speech therapy for Littlest and both see a Deaf Education teacher one hour a week. There should be someone in the district that handles special services for homeschool and private school students; I would probably start by calling the central distinct special education office and they should be able to get things rolling for you.

 

Some other thoughts for you to mull over. How long has it been since he has had an audiological evaluation? A change in his expressive speech may indicate a change in his hearing, so he hasn't had an eval since you notice this speech issue developing, I would recommend an appointment with an audiologist ASAP.

 

Also, if you feel this is a language issue related to his hearing (or mis-hearing) -and it sounds like this may be the case - it is important that you get services from someone who "gets" kids with hearing loss. Many speech therapist are very good with straight articulation issues but don't really understand the language issues for kids with hearing loss and how that affect their expressive speech. The SLP is used to focusing on the sound coming out when with the D/HH kids, the bigger problem is trying to decipher the sound going in, make sense of a signal that has all sorts of holes, then figure out how to produce a sound for a word that is consistently heard differently than the child is expected to produce. Add in the fact that the child may not be hearing the sounds he is producing himself to know whether they are coming out correctly and you can see it is a bigger problem that just a typical articulation issue.

 

We went through this with older DD and while the school SLPs did help some, the last year I saw no benefit because the therapist they assigned us didn't "get it" and only focused on articulation. I quit asking for speech services for DD because they were a waste of time and we rewrote her IEP goals for the Deaf Ed teacher to include those things that I had wanted the SLP to work on. You may want to think about asking for time with a deaf Ed teacher either instead of or in addition to the services from a speech therapist, because they may better understand the deeper root cause behind the speech errors.

 

Good luck! I hope that helps!

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It varies by state. In some states homeschooled children are eligible for special ed services and in some they are not. I have heard some parents say that their homeschooled child could only access a certain amount of therapy per year etc.

 

So, you really need to know your state regs. Don't depend on the school to know or to tell you. I have had to educate my own district as to the state regs couple times. You might ask on a local homeschool board if anyone is getting services and what they had to do to get them.

 

As to where you would go, again, you need to ask someone in your district.

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It does vary from state to state. Our current state offers open access to services for homeschoolers, but our previous state only allowed full time students to use speech services.

 

That was a particularly frustrating situation, because our insurance (Tricare/military) wouldn't cover speech as long as it was available in the local schools, regardless of whether the school allowed us access. I wrote a number of letters that year to various officials! Finally got help from our US Senator, who intervened with Tricare.

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My girls are both hard of hearing and we get services from the school district - speech therapy for Littlest and both see a Deaf Education teacher one hour a week. There should be someone in the district that handles special services for homeschool and private school students; I would probably start by calling the central distinct special education office and they should be able to get things rolling for you.

 

Some other thoughts for you to mull over. How long has it been since he has had an audiological evaluation? A change in his expressive speech may indicate a change in his hearing, so he hasn't had an eval since you notice this speech issue developing, I would recommend an appointment with an audiologist ASAP.

 

Also, if you feel this is a language issue related to his hearing (or mis-hearing) -and it sounds like this may be the case - it is important that you get services from someone who "gets" kids with hearing loss. Many speech therapist are very good with straight articulation issues but don't really understand the language issues for kids with hearing loss and how that affect their expressive speech. The SLP is used to focusing on the sound coming out when with the D/HH kids, the bigger problem is trying to decipher the sound going in, make sense of a signal that has all sorts of holes, then figure out how to produce a sound for a word that is consistently heard differently than the child is expected to produce. Add in the fact that the child may not be hearing the sounds he is producing himself to know whether they are coming out correctly and you can see it is a bigger problem that just a typical articulation issue.

 

We went through this with older DD and while the school SLPs did help some, the last year I saw no benefit because the therapist they assigned us didn't "get it" and only focused on articulation. I quit asking for speech services for DD because they were a waste of time and we rewrote her IEP goals for the Deaf Ed teacher to include those things that I had wanted the SLP to work on. You may want to think about asking for time with a deaf Ed teacher either instead of or in addition to the services from a speech therapist, because they may better understand the deeper root cause behind the speech errors.

 

Good luck! I hope that helps!

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply! About the part I bolded...his hearing loss is sensory-neural, and the nerves never developed in his one ear, so his hearing loss is fixed and permanent. It will never change, and is also why a hearing aid would never work for him. That's not to say that his hearing couldn't change in his good ear, but his good ear has remained stable thus far. He hears perfectly out of his good ear. The school district we used to be in insisted on a hearing test every year for his IEP, and his hearing specialist finally had to put his foot down and demanded that we not bring him back for at least 5 years. That was 2 years ago. lol He was tired of wasting our money and his time.

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In our state, the ps only has to offer the minimum as far as therapy. I inquired this year for my dd and learned that while in private outpatient therapy she can receive up to 3 hours per week (and is currently scheduled for 2 hours per week), the ps would only offer her 30 minutes per week for the same eval scores. Also, the public school therapy would most likely be in a group setting with up to 5 other children compared to the outpatient therapy that is private. She has insurance that will pay for outpatient therapy so we did decid to stay on that path rather than involving the school.

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