What Does a Home Based Speech Therapist Do?
A speech therapist is a certified professional with the ability to assist anyone from a young child with a tongue condition to an elderly stroke survivor. The certification for the position is intensive and requires schooling, clinical experience, and observed work in the field. Speech therapy is a form of therapeutic listening, teaching, and learning. If a child is struggling to be understood, a speech therapist can help them find a safe space to experiment with the sounds that they produce as they build up the coordination and the memory muscle to make the sounds consistently. After achieving a speech pathologist certification, these therapists may work in schools, elder care facilities, or in the home of their clients. Clients of all ages and skill levels can benefit from home speech therapy sessions. For children, they can work in a familiar environment. The toy puppy, kitty, car, or doll each take different mouth and lip movements, patterns, and coordination. Home speech therapy can also include foods that the child enjoys. Ice cream is useful in that it is easy to feel in the mouth, and swallowing small servings of ice cream can strengthen the tongue over time. Asking for another serving of sprinkles is another way to use the tongue, lips and breath in combination. Discuss Benefits of Home-Based Speech Therapy  In addition to giving children a safe place to try new sounds, home-based therapy is extremely beneficial to elders. Allowing an elder who has suffered an injury or illness that has limited their speech to work from home will also remove transportation worries for them and their family or caregiver. Elders, during at-home therapies, can work on other forms of communication with their therapist. This may include working with a screen, working on a computer keyboard, or simply practicing swallowing, slowly and a little bit at a time. Your tongue is a large and remarkably hard-working tool. After a stroke or brain injury, you need to relearn to work with it. At-home therapy early in the morning means the caregiver can plan a bath after swallowing practice. Over time, the speech therapist can observe as the client feeds themselves to confirm swallowing efficiency. There are serious health risks to aspirating liquids and solids, so swallowing therapy work is critical to any form of recovery. Elders can also get help from a therapist when working through the challenge known as aphasia. A common form of aphasia is when the client knows what something is for but cannot recall the name. This recall challenge can be embarrassing and frustrating. At home, the client can stay calmer while they rework those brain connections. Speech therapy is critical to communication and communication is critical to being human. At home therapy sessions can greatly speed up the process by increasing the comfort level of the client.