In-Home Speech Therapy
What Is In-Home Speech Therapy?
In-home speech therapy is speech therapy provided in the patient’s residence rather than at a physician’s office or medical facility. Speech therapists, also called speech-language pathologists, assist individuals with articulation, language, and oral-motor problems, helping to resolve issues around speaking, swallowing, eating, and drinking. This type of therapy has proven effective both with children struggling with developmental disorders, and adults suffering from degenerative diseases and neurological conditions.
The in-home provision of speech therapy offers patients several advantages over similar treatments in off-site locations. Overcoming obstacles in communication and other basic life skills is easier at home, in a comfortable, well-known environment. Undertaking therapy where you live also keeps your family more involved, better enabling them to encourage and assist you.
Communication problems can be particularly isolating. If you can’t speak so others understand you or if your voice isn’t loud enough or intelligible, you can feel alone or misunderstood. Baptist Health is committed to helping you regain and keep your communication abilities so you can be engaged with others. If you’re experiencing communication or other oral-motor issues, the rehabilitation professionals at Baptist Health might be able to help.
How Does In-Home Speech Therapy Work?
In-home care delivery means that medical services come to you, rather than you going to a medical facility to receive treatment. Your rehabilitative therapy will be conducted by a licensed speech-language pathologist.
What Does a Speech Pathologist Do?
Speech therapists are medically trained individuals who specialize in restoring the proper functioning of the oral and throat cavities and their related structures. Therapy is used to treat a wide range of speaking, linguistic, vocal, swallowing, and cognitive-communication disorders:
- Childhood-delayed development: speech, hearing, comprehension, and cognition issues
- Voice disorders: stuttering or hoarseness caused by excessive yelling or loud talking
- Vocal-cord disorders: causes include overuse, trauma, vocal-cord paralysis, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and vocal-cord nodules and polyps
- Feeding or swallowing problems:common in premature babies, infants born with a cleft lip or palate, children with weak mouth or throat muscles, and some adult disorders
- Hearing deficits: difficulties in hearing and aural comprehension
- Paradoxical vocal fold motion: a vocal-cord dysfunction with asthma-like symptoms that is associated with exercise in children and adolescents
- Neurological diseases: stroke, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson’s disease and Lou Gehrig’s disease, which are linked to communication and swallowing issues
- Head and neck cancers: speech and swallowing problems that stem from radiation therapy to the head and neck
- Dysphagia:swallowing problems caused by diseases, surgery, and/or radiation therapy.
Your therapist will evaluate your condition during his or her first visit. This evaluation will form the basis for a customized treatment plan that addresses your medical needs during future visits.
What Speech Therapy Services Are Offered in the Home?
Your speech therapist will:
- Evaluate and treat communication problems so you can regain listening, reading, speaking, and writing skills
- Perform swallowing studies and train you in swallowing
- Provide therapy for your vocal cords, to help you maintain a healthy voice
- Assist children with learning disabilities in mastering communication skills
- Improve cognitive functioning.
How Can In-Home Speech Therapy Help?
Speech therapy delivered in the home is effective for the following reasons:
- Personalized, one-on-one care: The speech therapist is focused on a single person: you.
- Friendly environment: Improving speech or learning to swallow again is easier in an environment that you already know by heart.
- Focus on basics: Of necessity, in-home therapy focuses on the basics rather than on tests and equipment. A personalized treatment plan may be more important to healing than depending on technology.
- You’re already home: If you’re dealing with or recovering from a medical condition, why go to a hospital or physician’s office to receive care? Staying at home means greater comfort for you.
- Less stress: Few people enjoy waiting rooms. At-home care is less stressful.
- Comparable results: At-home speech therapy can generate results on par with other types of outpatient programs.
In-home speech therapy is an important first step to ending the isolation that can result from communication and related issues of the oral and throat cavity.
How Do I Start In-Home Speech Therapy?
Contact us for more information, and to see if you're eligible to receive therapy and rehabilitation services at home. Baptist Health Home Care services require a physician referral.
In-home speech therapy services are available in the following locations: