Voice disorders result in changes to pitch, loudness, and overall vocal quality. Most childhood voice problems result from vocal abuse, e.g. yelling, shouting, and/or inappropriate vocal strain. Voice problems are also medically based, such as allergies or reflux. These changes tend to interfere with communicative abilities. Parents might say their child has lost his/her voice, voice sounds hoarse or raspy, or that their child seems to be using a lot of effort to speak. Research reports that children and adolescents felt their voice disorders resulted in negative attention and limited their participation in activities.

Intervention for voice disorders will include a full assessment (subjective and objective data collection), indirect and/or direct treatment (depending on the age of the child), and teaching of strategies for improved voice use, elimination of vocal abuse, and management of voice related medical conditions (reflux). Parent education and training is a crucial part of voice therapy, as parents will be responsible for implementing behavioral programs in the home for best voice recovery.

Lisa Rubin M.S. CCC-SLP is a licensed speech-language pathologist specializing in voice disorders. She provides assessment and treatment services for children from birth through adolescence who exhibit various forms of communication disorders (voice, speech, language, and fluency (stuttering). She received her Bachelors of Science in Communication Disorders at Boston University and then earned her Masters of Science in Communication Science from Hunter College (CUNY). Lisa holds a Certificate of Clinical Competence from the American Speech-Language Hearing Association and is licensed to practice in the state of New York. Currently employed by The Brooklyn Hospital Center, Lisa brings a medical focus to behavioral intervention. In addition, Lisa has held the position of Adjunct Professor of Communication Sciences at Hunter College since 2006, where she has taught courses in the anatomy and physiology of speech production, speech science, phonetics, and voice disorders. Currently, Lisa works with children ages birth to three years for speech and language stimulation therapy, the pre-school aged population (3-5 years) for speech, language, voice, and fluency intervention, and the school-aged and adolescent population for fluency and voice intervention.

Lisa Rubin M.S. CCC-SLP travels to your Manhattan home (Upper East Side, Midtown East, Murray Hill, Gramercy, Union Square, East Village, Soho, Upper West Side, Midtown, Chelsea, and West Village) and she makes Brooklyn home visits (Fort Greene, Brooklyn Heights). She involves the family in the treatment process as much as possible and she works with babies, preschoolers, and school age children and adolescents.

For more information, please contact Lisa Rubin M.S. CCC-SLP at lisa@brooklynletters.com

Educational-based speech language pathology is playing a bigger role in the literacy success of children and adolescents. Related professions and teachers are starting to become more aware of our unique skill set and how we play a critical role in education.

The following document is posted on the American Speech Hearing Association’s website, Literacy Gateway.

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) have the specialized knowledge and experience needed to identify communication problems and to provide the help that children need to build critical language and literacy skills. SLPs are often the first professionals to identify the root cause of reading and writing problems through a child’s difficulty with language. SLPs help children to build the skills they need to succeed in school and in life.

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s (ASHA) National Outcome Measurement System (NOMS) data indicates that more than 70% of teachers who responded to a survey believed that students who received SLP services demonstrated improved pre-reading, reading or reading comprehension skills. A majority of teachers also cited improvements in the student’s listening and written language skills and ability to communicate in socially-appropriate ways (pragmatics).

Key elements of a speech-language pathologist’s academic training relating to early language and literacy development include skills to:

* Build and reinforce relationships between early spoken language and early pre-literacy abilities and consider influences of parent-child interactions in early shared storybook interactions;
* Address difficulties involving phonological awareness, memory, and retrieval;
* Teach children to use tactile-kinesthetic and auditory cues in reading and writing;
* Analyze how the language demands of textbooks, academic talk, and curriculum may stress a student’s capabilities at different age and grade levels; and
* Conduct fine-grain analyses of written language, including spelling, to generate intervention that matches the needs of individual students.

How Speech-Language Pathologists Can Contribute

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are key members of the team responsible for helping students learn to read and write. SLP’s contribute in the areas of:

1. Prevention—Communicating risk factors to teachers and parents, and working with them to develop programs to help children acquire explicit, age-appropriate knowledge, skills and strategies of the components of language that contribute to reading and writing development.
2. Identifying At-Risk Children—assisting in development and implementation of screening (e.g., instruments and teacher observation checklists) and referral procedures for very young children as well as older school-age children, including modifying procedures to reduce bias (e.g., dynamic assessment techniques and criterion referenced tasks) for culturally and linguistically diverse populations.
3. Assessing—selecting, implementing, adapting, and interpreting assessment tools and methods to evaluate skills in spoken language, reading, writing and spelling.
4. Providing Intervention—collaborating with teachers and families to plan intervention goals and activities, as well as modifying curricula to keep students progressing in the general education curriculum.
5. Documenting Outcomes—establishing a tracking system for identifying new or re-emerging literacy deficits and documenting outcomes of intervention goals and plans.
6. Program Development—directing or participating in teams to develop school or system-wide strategic approaches to early identification and intervention for children with reading deficits.
7. Advocating for Effective Literacy Practices—providing information about literacy development to state and local agencies that plan and evaluate curricula, establish comprehensive assessments and set related policies; educating them about relationships between spoken language and written language (i.e., reading, writing and spelling) and the benefits of collaborative instructional approaches.
8. Advancing the Knowledge Base—conducting scientifically-based research on early literacy development.