The start of this year has been challenging for all us due to the health crisis we are facing now. However, Doris Duan-Young Autism Center’s support in creating awareness on childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) for the community has remained consistent.
When your child is diagnosed with CAS, you feel emotionally exhausted. However, worry not. DDY is with you to help you in this journey, from understanding the disorder to guiding you to deal with the condition.
Here are five important facts that will help you understand CAS:
1. CAS is a speech sound’s movement difficulty.
The child with CAS usually experiences a difficulty in making accurate movements of jaw, face, tongue and lips to produce speech sound. This is primarily because of the fact that the information coming from the brain to these muscles is affected.
2. CAS is not a weakness of muscles.
There is nothing wrong in strength of speech muscles that make sounds. Child can accurately chew, swallow food and drink liquid.
3. CAS is not speech-language delay.
Child with speech delay follows the same path of speech- language development as normal peer, but at a slower rate. However in CAS, the child faces the difficulty in planning for movements that is required for speech sounds. Therefore, it appears as difficulty in transitioning from one sound to another sound while speaking.
4. CAS doesn’t go away on its own.
The child with CAS needs intensive and specific speech therapy approach that will focus on actual sequenced movements of jaw, tongue, lips and facial muscles to produce intelligible syllables, words, phrases and spontaneous speech.
5. Early intervention is the key.
CAS can make it difficult for a child to develop adequate literacy; social-communication skills, and perform well at school. Therefore, it should be treated at earliest.
Knowing these important factors about CAS will lead you now to the next step which is finding the best center to help you with your child’s treatment. DDY, a well-known multidisciplinary treatment facility with research-based programs for children with autism and other intellectual/developmental disorders in Dubai Healthcare City, is here to help you and is the right center for your child. DDY’s speech and language therapists are all uniquely educated and trained to treat CAS. Each child will undergo intensive speech therapy that will teach them the appropriate movement patterns required to speech sounds.
The team of highly trained and DHCC-licensed SLPs at DDY will provide:
1. Screening of CAS: To recognize the vital characteristic of CAS.
2. Most effective assessment: DHCC licensed SLPs provide specific way to assess CAS and differentiate it from other speech sound disorders.
3. Research based treatment methods: The center provides effective treatment technique such as PROMPT (Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets), DTTC (Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing), Progressive Approximation, ReST (Rapid Syllable Transition Treatment), AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) and other effective visual and tactile cues. Currently, DDY have four PROMPT trained, and one DTTC trained SLP.
4. Usable therapy techniques: Parents get support to learn practical, usable strategies to do at home to improve speech intelligibility for child with CAS.
5. Hands on training: For effectiveness of treatment, hands on training and demonstration of activities to parents are provided.
As we observe the Childhood Apraxia of Speech awareness month in May, we continue to further educate ourselves and other people about CAS and how DDY can play an active role in supporting the apraxia community. As a center that provides speech and language therapy, we always ensure that our parents will never feel alone in this battle and that we are together in their child’s treatment journey in reaching their full potential.
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