What is it about?

What parents felt about in-depth training and taking the lead in therapy activities with their child with a cleft-related speech disorder. Parents were very positive about the training course, and mainly about the intervention programme. They felt empowered to help their child. This tells us that SLPs should train parents so they can take a direct role in intervention with their child, whilst providing ongoing supervision and support.

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Why is it important?

This is the first study in which parents have had in-depth training so that they are equipped and empowered to undertake therapy with their child with cleft-related speech sound disorders. It is a detailed report of their experiences of the training and the subsequent therapy they undertook with their child. This evidence suggests that this could be an alternative model of service delivery for children, with the potential to improve access to therapy in a climate where there are typically long waiting lists.

Perspectives

There are very few studies reporting on parent's experiences of training and working with their children with speech sound disorders. Given the global shortage of SLPs, harnessing parents' to help undertake therapy is the logical thing to do. We learnt so much from what our parents told us in this study. It was inspiring to witness the growth of parents in their knowledge, their positive feelings of success and empowerment, further reinforced by seeing significant speech improvements in their children, as reported by Sweeney et al. (2020). This is an example of parents and SLPs working successfully in partnership.

Debbie Sell
Great Ormond Street Hospital NHS Trust

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This page is a summary of: Parent Experiences of Undertaking Therapy for Cleft Palate Speech Disorders Following In-Depth Training, Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, July 2023, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2023_persp-22-00253.
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