Keri Sharpe and Mary MacDonald, speech-language pathologists at Celebrate the Children, had the opportunity to participate in a PROMPT (Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets) therapy training at the beginning of April. PROMPT therapy is a tactile-kinesthetic technique that assists individuals who have motor speech production issues. Each speech-language pathologist at Celebrate the Children is trained in this technique and utilizes it throughout treatment sessions with their students. This technique involves the speech-language pathologist manually guiding individuals through the production of different sounds, words and phrases via touch pressure cues on clients' facial musculature. There are different levels of support that can be used to facilitate different speech sounds, which is appropriate for the population at Celebrate the Children. There are over 100 different muscles involved in speech production, and PROMPT training teaches therapists specific tactile cues that allow clients to develop proper oral musculature movements. Essentially, the goal of PROMPT therapy is to 'teach' the speech musculature to perform sounds appropriately. Throughout the training, Keri and Mary had the students on their caseloads that they thought would benefit from PROMPT in mind. The training challenged Keri and Mary to think about lesson plans to try with their students using practical games and/or books in their therapy toolbox. This new skill will enrich not only Keri and Mary's practice, but will benefit all of the children with speech sound challenges as PROMPT therapy is appropriate for a wide range of clients, including individuals with autism who may have difficulties with motor speech production.
-Mary MacDonald, MS CCC-SLP & Keri Sharpe, MS CCC-SLP
Contributions to this blog are made by Celebrate the Children's highly talented, interdisciplinary team and wonderful families.