Resources for Treating Clients With Craniofacial Differences

July is officially Cleft and Craniofacial Awareness month, but I celebrate craniofacial awareness every month. Working with a team of more than a dozen medical and dental professionals, I follow nearly 2,000 patients with craniofacial differences through yearly evaluations, from infancy to young adulthood or beyond. After working in the profession for 28 years—when did THAT happen?!—evaluating and treating patients with craniofacial differences is second nature to me. So I sometimes forget that when these patients go home, the speech-language pathologists helping them might not know about the same strategies or resources I do. I often get urgent phone calls or emails from SLPs who receive a referral for a child with a craniofacial difference. In some cases, this may be their first time treating a child with a cleft palate who uses compensatory misarticulation patterns. Although compensatory misarticulations sound different from most common articulation errors, they still fit within the basic attributes of articulation disorders—a change in place, manner or voicing. I also recommend not addressing moderate to severe hypernasality in treatment because this usually requires surgical correction. Most of us develop techniques to better elicit targeted articulation sounds from clients—who doesn’t love learning a great speech hack?—and there are also many tricks of the trade to help our patients with craniofacial disorders improve their speech skills more quickly. I ofte...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Academia & Research Health Care Slider Speech-Language Pathology cleft palate craniofacial disorders Speech Disorders Source Type: blogs