Speech Therapy

St. Claire Regional offers quality Speech Therapy services across the lifespan to the very youngest of children, senior citizens and everyone in between.  Whether the problem is a developmental delay in childhood, difficulty swallowing or feeding after an injury or illness (such as cancer or stroke), or difficulty communicating, speech therapy can offer significant benefits to a patient’s quality of life.

Our Speech Language Pathologist can help:

• Improve oral-motor skills
• Be a verbal communicator
• Be an intelligible speaker
• Process and comprehend spoken language
• Put words together to formulate their thoughts with age-appropriate grammatical skills
• Diminish "jargon" and replace with effective verbal communication
• Be able to understand directions and language beyond their memorized routines
• Desensitize children and adults to their difficulties and instill confidence, trust, and self-esteem

Pediatric Behaviors that should trigger an SLP referral

By age 3 years cannot:

• be understood by family and/or caregivers
• correctly produce vowels and such sounds as p, b, m, w in words
• repeat when not understood without becoming frustrated

By age 4 years cannot:

• be understood by individuals with whom they do not associate regularly
• be understood by family and/or caregivers
• correctly produce t, d, k, g, f
• be asked to repeat without becoming sensitive

By age 5 years cannot:

• be understood in all situations by most listeners
• correctly produce most speech sounds
• be asked to repeat without exhibiting frustration

The specially trained Speech Therapists at St. Claire Regional's Outpatient Center can help.  Please call (606) 783-6919 for more information or (606) 783-7676 to schedule an evaluation with a Speech Therapist.