If your child sees or has been seen by Dr. Stephen Camarata...

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am trying to get my child evaluated by Dr. Stephen Camarata, but when I called, I was told that he does not do evaluations. Instead, it is his wife Mary who does them. I was told that since he is a professor at Vanderbild, he cannot do evaluations. It used to be that he could do them, but now apparently he no longer can, is what I have been told. Is this true? I know a lot of posters here have had their kids evaluated by Dr. Stephen Camarata. If so, was it a long time ago? Do you know if it is still possible to have Dr. Camarata do an evaulation? If so, how do you get that done?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Mary Camarata does the bulk of the testing now at the Late Talkers Foundation they started. Stephen Camarata consults for the Foundation.

When we had our first evaluation five years ago, it was at Vanderbilt itself. But even then Mary did most of the testing, and Stephen came in toward the end. That's also been our experience at the Late Talkers Foundation, that Stephen comes in for the end and answers questions. He's typically already seen a video of your child, work samples, questionnaires, and he is able to tell pretty quickly from looking over the test results and interacting with a child their language level and prognosis, in our experience.

[Anonymous]

What is the goal of these camerata evals, im wondering? I have a DC with pretty significant MERLD (and AHD) and he already has a bunch of intervention (lots of speech therapy, an IEP) but his gains have been relatively small. Wondering what i might get out of one of these evals from camerata, who i keep hearing about

[Anonymous]

In our case, we'd already had our child evaluated several times. It was clear his language was severely affected, but no one could tell us what to do other than sign up for speech therapy. Outside evaluators said no to ASD, but schools kept trying to push that "educational" label. We were totally flying blind.

It was only when we went to Nashville and talked to Dr. Camarata that we got the full scope of what was going on with our son, as well as a very detailed plan on his learning style, what classroom setting was appropriate, an educational plan, and most importantly, when our son's language was likely to catch up. I've talked to countless other parents who have seen Dr. Camarata, and this one piece of information is just worth its weight in gold. Our child's language is still not caught up at 10, but he is getting close, and is exactly on the timeline that Dr. Camarata predicted. Other parents who were given diferent timelines -- by K, by 3rd, by 5th, by middle school -- have reported the same thing.

[Anonymous]

OP here- I was told by Mary Camarata herself that she would be the one doing all the testing and that Dr. Stephen Camarata would not be involved at all. I do question Mary's credentials in terms of giving an autism dx or ruling out autism and I am wondering if it is worth the cost if Dr. Stephen Camarata is not involved at all in the process?

[Anonymous]

Then that is a change. Mary, an SLP, has over 20 years of working with her husband as a partner in his research, and she's quite good. I'm not sure why you'd question her credentials. (For example, at our local renowned autism center in the Midwest, it's a SLP who does the autism testing, including the ADOS.) Mary was able to get my child to finish hours of testing when normally he'd only do minutes. She had a great deal of insight into his delays, and she's the one who actually writes the report and makes the recommendations.

We saw both of them just a little over a year ago.

[Anonymous]

NP. KKI and CNMC both use a psychologist and SLP to test for autism including ADOS and they take insurance w/o the cost of time/travel. Is the testing by the Camarata's THAT much better? Is it worth the trip especially if you are not going to see Stephen but only Mary?

If I were OP, I would try KKI and CNMC and even the free studies at NIH first before heading off to Vanderbilt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP. KKI and CNMC both use a psychologist and SLP to test for autism including ADOS and they take insurance w/o the cost of time/travel. Is the testing by the Camarata's THAT much better? Is it worth the trip especially if you are not going to see Stephen but only Mary?

If I were OP, I would try KKI and CNMC and even the free studies at NIH first before heading off to Vanderbilt.

Does KKI and CNMC tell you when your child's language will normalize? That was worth the trip for us.

Also, the very indepth approach to teaching language. Mary was able to get our largely nonverbal child to take several turns of conversation with her...all without her asking him any questions. It was astonishing to witness. She also did a math lesson with him, to show us how to teach him addition and subtraction, and a reading lesson, to get the story into his visual memory as his auditory memory is so weak.

[Anonymous]

I had my son evaluated by mary Camarata last year. Stephen is present at the end of the assessment but it is his wife, Mary, an SLP who does the evaluations. Post if you have more questions.

[Anonymous]

I do not think it is worth the trip to Nashville for the evaluation. Though the peace of mind was helpful. I was disappointed with the quality of the report prepared by Mary.

[Anonymous]

How long did it take to receive the report? We saw Mary in mid July and haven't received it yet. I agree with others, though, her evaluation was top notch. My kid has all sorts of sensory issues and was still able to be there for 3.5 hours. Unbelievable! I highly recommend the trip.

[Anonymous]

It was definatly worth it! I would have paid more even to have the kind of speech/academic project plan for helping speech, reading, comprehension, academic things related to language delays. I treat it like anything I am making a big financial investment in .. a house, a car, having a child and all that goes with it. It is like any service, you want to make sure you are a "wise consumer of services". I have heard that from 3 of the best speech experts anywhere, Dr. Jim MacDonald, Mary Camarata, and Dr. Camarata. Between the 3 of them, they near 100 years of speech/language/communication research, expertise, worked with hundreds/thousands of children/families in ALL kinds of languge delays. Experience and research based findings and expertise mean EVERYTHING to me, when it comes to helping my child. Mary Camarata is EXCELLENT in what she does! I would, have, and DO trust her to do a VERY thorough, compotent evaluations, with very specific recommendations that have helped my son over the last 3 years and until language normalizes! I wanted the BEST from beginning of our journey to the end of langauge normalization which is expected to be by end of 3rd grade at best case scenario and more delay would be between 4th and 5th grade, as no one has an exact crystal ball to their life, for anything. You can do what you want, it's your life, your money, and your child. To me, it is worth every penny and then some to help my child to the best of my ability and I want it to be the right/correct help. Everything they have recommended has worked for my son, dx and therapy. Again, just like buying a car or a house, there are many decisions as to what to do, but you have to be a wise consumer of services for anything in your life. Just as the same as in Dr's, Dentists, Services for your kids with whatever. The trip was WELL worth it and we have gotten updated evaluations from Mary as well, last 2 years, to help once he reached goals and moved ahead in school to be able to guide us with his academic needs. That's our experience and hands down they are the BEST!

[Anonymous]

OP here- Thanks for all the replies. I was really hoping to see Dr. Stephen Camarata so I am disappointed. I understand that Mary is an excellent SLP, but I am looking for someone who can tell us once and for all whether or not DS is on the spectrum, and while Mary can probably tell us a lot of interesting and valuable things about DS language issues, I don't know what her knowledge/understanding of issues other than language is...? I have never heard of a SLP diagnosing autism, I thought you had to be a developmental pediatrician or a psychologist to do that?

[Anonymous]

Mary is way, way, way more than some sort of garden variety SLP though. She's a clincial researcher as well. And yes, she is thorougly trained on diagnosing autism. She's likely far better trained than many psychologists and developmental peds, in fact. Remember that it's a behavorial diagnosis, not a medical one.

We've been five times, and in each case, Mary's take on the subject was right in line with Dr. Camarata's. THere were a few thing they didn't totally agree with each other on, and kind of hashed it out while we were all talking, but it was in the minutaie, not remotely the diagnosis.

[Anonymous]

Also, Stephen Camarata isn't a developmental pediatrican or a psychologist either.

He's a PH.D level scientist and researcher.