Reply to The ethics of price gauging special needs families

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a school psychologist and have a son with special needs. The research on so many types of therapies is really lacking.

When he was turning three and really needed speech therapy I really looked into the research. Ethically they can't take identical twins and give one twin speech therapy and the other twin is the control, which would be the best type of study to see if the twin who receives therapy ends up being better off.  The same with occupational therapy.

In my experience (which really isn't proof of anything, of course) when there is a specific targeted issue like an articulation disorder or producing sounds that can be measured pretty well then speech therapy seems to be effective.

If it is a language issue then working for 30 minutes or 60 minutes once a week really just doesn't seem to be effective. There are around 100 hours in a week that kids are awake. So that is really working on something intently 1% of the time. So you can take your child to speech therapy for language issues for years and continue to pay but how much is it really doing.

I think as a parent if I am spending money and time to get my chid therapy, then I am going to have a tendency to think that is what is making my child better over the course of time and not just they are developing as they get older.  So providers take advantage of this. [/quote]

I agree to some extent, as an SLP. Young children can make natural gains from exposure, maturing, and therapy- i have a few students who I’m quite sure could have aged out of developmental delays without my support. But they also did not meet IDEA disability criteria, and were somehow found eligible anyway. It can be hard to tell the difference.

However, progress does not come from just 30-60 minutes a week of therapy. Interventions have to be carried over into other settings, and targets should be modeled by other adults in the child’s life. Sadly this rarely happens- providers don’t always share this information or come up with strategies that are easy for teachers and parents to implement. There is actually lots of new research on language intervention and therapy for language disorders is effective if implemented correctly. And the child should also be able to meaningfully participate in therapy.

[/quote]

Speech therapists are worth their weight in gold, IMO.  At least the good ones, although I don't have experience with a bad one.  I don't know about "language delays" per se, but with speech issues, plenty.  Lisps, W/R confusion, etc.  I'm often shocked by the number of parents who think it's cute (and it is when they're toddlers) and don't do anything about it.  It's hard on those kids when they don't outgrow and much harder to correct in later years.

And before people start saying I have no idea what people are/aren't doing, I'm thinking specifically of a few people I know who didn't do anything because they did think it was cute. [/quote]

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