Importance of Attendance and Home Practice to Achieve Therapy Goals

Parents and carers play an important role in speech therapy progress and their involvement is vital to the progress of therapy goals.

 

Speech therapy sessions are usually conducted once per week or fortnight and the sessions last for 45 minutes.

 

Consistent attendance to speech therapy sessions contributes to faster progress towards therapy goals. When children do not have consistent attendance or home practice, their progress slows, as the Speech Pathologist must spend important session time reteaching previously taught skills instead of moving forward with a new skill.

 

Due to the limited amount of time a child spends in therapy with their Speech Pathologist, it is essential that children practice their therapy goals at home to achieve optimal progress. For example, 10 minutes of home practice per day amounts to an extra 70 minutes of practice per week.

 

At Mouth and Mind Speech Pathology, home practice is individually prescribed by the Speech Pathologist and may involve traditional homework tasks such as completing work sheets and play based activities. Our clients are all offered online therapy activities (ie. Boom cards) or online oral motor exercises (ie. Wibbi) which may be more engaging for some children and may encourage them to be more motivated to complete home practice.

 

Please ensure that you speak with your Speech Pathologist if you have any concerns regarding home practice tasks.