Online Speech Therapy (Teletherapy)

Sarah: When you’re ready to book an appointment, contact our reception team, and they’ll organize an initial assessment for you. They’ll ask you some general questions and get some information so that they can match you to the speech pathologist that’s right for you. Once you’ve booked in your initial assessment with us, we’ll send you some forms to fill out, fill those out online, and then send them back to us. When it’s time for your appointment, you’ll need to connect with your speech pathologist by your chosen platform.

Sarah: If you’re using Zoom, click on the link and then your speech pathologist will admit you into the meeting. If you’re using Skype, your speech pathologist will give you a call. Zoom is our preferred platform because of its screen-sharing functions and general usability. But if there’s another platform that you’d like to use, just let us know.

Rochelle: Your speech pathologist will start by asking you some general questions to get some background information about your speech or language concerns, as well as about your general health and development. Next, the speech pathologist might conduct a more direct assessment. Depending on you or your child’s needs, this may involve informal assessment such as listening to speech in a conversational style.

Vince: Now, can you say for me, please, “I went to Surrey Hills and had 77 ice creams.

Patient: I went to Surrey Hills and had 77 ice creams.

Vince: Good girl. All right.

Rochelle: Or it may be conducted in a formal assessment style by asking you or your child to say specific sounds, words, or sentences, or even reading out loud. For younger children, this might also include getting your child to play with something, or it might include getting you and your child to do an activity together. For other clients, such as those seeking tongue thrust therapy, this may include looking into their mouths, as well as asking them to do some specific tasks. Importantly, the assessment will be tailored to you or your child’s individual needs.

Sarah: Make sure you ask your speech pathologist any questions that you might have, it’s their job to make sure you have all the information you need to make a decision about what to do next. After the appointment, you can call our reception team to book in any more appointments.

Can you grab a glass of water and just give me a swallow of that? We’ll do this a few times. Great. Okay.

Sarah: All right. So our next word is chin. This is my chin. So let’s think about how many sounds we can hear … ch-i-n … All right, three sounds.

Rochelle: Okay, ready? This time we’re just going to make the sound like this. Ready? Kuh, kuh, kuh. You try again.

Patient: Kuh.

Rochelle: Oh, that was awesome. All right, you’re ready? We’re going to try some words with the kuh sound now.

Patient: Castle.

Rochelle: Oh, that was an awesome kuh sound. Okay, castle. Alrighty.

Sarah: Sorry, is she saying a word like “teddy”? Then what you can do is add another word to that, preferably a verb, to make that sentence a bit longer. So she says teddy and you can say, “Oh, teddy go,” or, “Teddy’s jumping,” and then you can have your teddy and he can be jumping around like that.

Vince: Can you see the drawers in the next picture? Which drawer will he get his pants from?

Patient: The middle one.

Rochelle: How have you been doing your practice daily? Have you been able to get 15 minutes in every day?

Parent: It started off as a bit of a struggle, but now we’ve got it each where we’re like, smooth routine and working really well with you.

Rochelle: Oh, great. What activities have you been doing for the past week?

Parent:Just reading stories and then talking about stories or reading books.

Rochelle: Yeah.

Parent: We did a scavenger hunt a bit ago about Easter, and talked about the things and the colours.

Rochelle: Oh, great. That sounds fun.

Parent: Where possible we talked about pictures, about words or images that were on the pages of the book.

Rochelle: Oh, fantastic. That’s some great different activities and great because you can work on the sentence level, which is where Jackson’s at right now so that’s fantastic.

Sarah: All right, so now we’re going to watch a little bit of this video and what I want you to think about is how the two aliens might be feeling and what they might be thinking. So we want to work out whether they’re thinking the same thing or whether they’re thinking different things. All right. Let’s have a look at his face. Hmm, it looks like … he’s putting his hand up like that. I wonder if he’s asking a question there.

delivering sessions via teletherapy is seeing how comfortable clients are in their own environment, because they’re at home and they’re familiar with it and they’re with their pets and siblings and families. They feel really comfortable on screen and are super engaged, especially with all the different resources, activities, and games that we’re able to share through our screens to make therapy super fun and super exciting for all the kids.

Vince: The best part about delivering sessions via teletherapy is that it provides access to children and adults to a huge range of dedicated speech pathologists we have here in the clinic. I’ve been doing teletherapy for kids who stutter and adults who stutter and also for children and adults that have tongue thrust problems throughout Victoria, interstate, and even overseas and it’s worked fantastically.

Sarah: It surprised me how well some of the children who have difficulty sitting still in the clinic room actually have been able to concentrate and focus with the teletherapy sessions. Particularly when we’re looking at pictures or doing games through the screen, they’ve been able to engage really well, which has surprised me in a really good way.

Vince: I think the amount of interaction that we were able to obtain with younger children, I thought that younger children would be jumping on and off the screen, but they were so engaging and because we’re able to share drawing and games, it really helped to keep their interest and motivation and therefore engage with us doing the therapy. That was the most surprising aspect about teletherapy.

Sarah: No, it’s not that hard to set up all the equipment. I think people feel like it’s going to be really difficult, but in most cases it’s been very straightforward. All the client needs is a camera and speakers built into their computer or laptop or iPad. People have been using different devices and they’ve all been quite effective, but it’s really easy to set up, particularly with the Zoom sessions. You don’t even have to create an account, you just click on a link, open it up and you’re there, you’re connected.

Vince: If somebody gets cut off in the middle of a session, we have really good backup support here, and we can call you, we can contact you immediately and try and reestablish that connection as soon as possible.

Rochelle: So if your child can’t sit in front of the camera for the whole session, that’s absolutely okay, and that’s something that we do expect, especially with younger children, just as we would expect that to happen perhaps in the room when we’re face to face and the child isn’t engaged the whole time.

Vince: We always have parents in the room right next to their children and you can use fantastic materials that you will have in your very home. And the therapists are amazing that we have in the clinic, they know how to engage your children.

Vince: NDIS is covered under teletherapy and so are the EPC plans and even a lot of private health insurance have now got cover for teletherapy. So I think the landscape has changed quite a bit on that, and there is funding available.

Rochelle: So if you’re worried about your child having too much screen time, what we do here at Box Hill Speech Pathology is we take a lot of time and effort to ensure that your child has a super fun and engaging session with us over teletherapy and we also make sure that it doesn’t feel like they’re staring at a screen for too long or watching videos or anything like that but rather we create opportunities for both you and your child to play lots of games and for us to observe and for us to play lots of games and activities with your child, just as we would in the clinic room face to face.

Sarah: There’s actually a really significant body of evidence to support the effectiveness of teletherapy. It’s been building for quite a number of years now. A lot of clinical research studies and comparative studies as well of face to face versus teletherapy, and they’ve had some really good outcomes with the teletherapy sessions. The evidence indicates that teletherapy is just as effective as face to face.