What do SLPs do beyond fixing sounds?
I get this question a lot, especially from other colleagues in the school setting. We are not only specialists in the treatment of sound disorders, but we are also specialists in evaluating and treating swallowing, cognitive, and social language disorders. In addition, our schooling provides us with the knowledge and competence of a wide range of disorders such as Autism, Down Syndrome, chromosomal disorders, and more. To help you understand more about our profession, below are five roles and responsibilities of SLPs that you may not know we are capable of:)
1. We are not only in schools:
You can also find us in hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, private clinics, traveling to homes, and most recently providing services over the internet at a distance. In each setting, our roles and responsibilities are specialized to the setting in which we are working.
2. We collaborate with other professionals:
We work in multidisciplinary teams to help support our clients and students. You may find us working with physical therapists, occupational therapists, doctors, nurses, teachers, ABA therapists, etc. Who we collaborate with depends on the needs of our students.
3. Our specialty is not only about speech sounds:
Our schooling provides us with clinical competence in evaluating and treating a wide range of disorders. One of my professors specialized in working with transgender clients who were working on changing their voice and the social language aspects surrounding their gender transformation. In addition, we are imperative in the treatment and evaluation following events such as strokes and traumatic brain injuries.
4. In schools we are a wealth of knowledge:
We not only help students with their sounds, but we are also language experts. We provide a knowledge and understanding of the linguistic and syntactical properties of language that some of our students don’t pick up on without explicit teaching. We also help our students with social language deficits navigate the many ‘hidden’ social constructs of school and peers.
5. We are masters at Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC):
Many of our clients have deficits in their verbal communication skills. Therefore, we help our clients and their caregivers navigate the world of assistive technology. This is a whole semester class in and of itself, but in a nutshell, SLPs have the knowledge and understanding of the technology available to provide our clients and students with a ‘voice’ that will fit their needs whether it be aided (using a device or other system) or unaided (gestures, body language, facial expressions, etc.) .
As always, your dedicated SLP,
Dayna Sanders, MA, CCC-SLP
