Before your first appointment, you’ll fill out an intake form to report feeding, swallowing, speech or language concerns. This will provide me medical and social history of your child to help me understand their background and make a plan for the evaluation. After this initial evaluation appointment, I’ll provide you with treatment recommendations.

For your convenience, all of our appointments take place at your home; the initial evaluation can take up to two hours. To begin, I will initially play and interact with your child in the presence of a parent or caregiver; this helps establish a rapport with your child, so they feel comfortable in my presence. Next, I will observe your child eating, drinking and interacting with food and utensils in a typical mealtime routine. At the end of the session, I will discuss my observations and together we will develop goals and a treatment plan. We will also discuss frequency of services to determine what works best for your family for optimal progress.

I will need to observe your child using their typical bottles and nipples, cups and utensils while eating and drinking their preferred drinks and foods. If your child is eating pureed or solid foods, I need to observe this as well. In order to learn their relationships and interactions with food, it is also important for me to observe your child interacting with less preferred and more challenging textures and consistencies. During this time I will also observe their oral motor skills, posture, volume intake, etc.

An evaluation for children in this age range mainly consist of answering questions regarding your expressive and receptive language concerns, milestones and developmental stages and reviewing your child’s medical history; I’ll also take time to play with your child to elicit speech sounds or words.

I will need a clean, quiet room or area to provide treatment. I use a play-based therapy approach to address your child’s goals; we will most likely be playing on the floor using your child’s toys. I will also bring some toys of my own to keep our time together fun and exciting.

Yes! During my sessions, I will work one-on-one with your child, but I prefer that parents observe and ask questions along the way. I will also provide training and education to caregivers at the end of the session so you can utilize my therapy strategies and techniques on a daily basis. This improves the generalization process and helps us make timely progress.

I accept Medicaid, Health Savings Account (HSA) and private pay.  A superbill will be provided upon request for insurance reimbursement in the event you choose private pay.

View our policy here.