Who We Are
Speech and Language Professionals
Achieving Better Communication is dedicated to serving our community. Our Speech Language pathologists, licensed by the state of California, are authorized and qualified to provide speech and language therapy evaluation, treatment planning, treatment, instruction, and consultative services. Through our efforts we strive to create a more independent, effective and improved quality of life for our clients and their family by working with both child and family to promote growth and development. We pride ourselves on assisting children to reach their full potential both socially and interpersonally. At Achieving Better Communication we believe that every child has a right to maximize their potential and that the needs of the children shall always be the number one priority.
Areas of Focus
Our team is able to provide care and services for a wide range of areas and conditions including:
- Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS), which is not being able to “plan” the sounds and patterns that make up words and then send that “plan” to their mouth to actually form the words (this child says “dog” 10 different ways incorrectly, struggles more with increasing syllables, and visibly distorts their mouth to try to imitate speech.)
- Receptive language, which is not seeming to “understand” what others are saying (this child can’t correctly answer yes/no questions, can’t follow 1-3 step directions, etc.)
- Expressive language, which is not being able to tell others what they understand or “know” or not being able to express their knowledge.
- Articulation, which is being able to use their mouth the right way (putting their tongue and lips in the correct spots) to produce words correctly.
- Stuttering, which is getting stuck on certain sounds in words.
- Cluttering, which is talking too fast and leaving out parts of words.
- Developmental Delays Unspecified
- Auditory Processing/ADD/ADHD
- Tongue thrust/lisp
- Social Skills/Pragmatics
Who We Serve
At Achieving Better Communication we provide services to individuals from birth through adolescence.
We proudly partner with the Alta CA Regional Center, and make ourselves available to local school districts and the community to provide much needed services geared towards improving the quality of life of our friends and neighbors.
Achieving Better Communication currently has one clinic location in Grass Valley, California and also provides in-home services for early intervention in the following areas:
Nevada County: Grass Valley, Nevada City, Alta Sierra, Penn Valley, Lake Wildwood, Lake of the Pines
Placer County: Auburn, Colfax, Granite Bay, Rocklin, Roseville
Our Therapy Services
The Referral and Assessment
We often are first introduced to a child who needs our services when a family member, teacher, or doctor refers them for assistance with the child’s development. Following this brief consultation or screening would be a full assessment if deemed necessary.
A speech and language assessment includes a variety of standardized and non-standardized measures. These tools are used to provide you with the most accurate evaluation of your child's speech and language strengths, as well as communication challenges. Standardized evaluations include a selection of speech and language assessment tools that will compare your child's skills to those of typically developing peers. These are instruments such as articulation or phonology tests, vocabulary tests, test of grammar/syntax, and pragmatic skills. Non-standardized measures may include observations of your child, speech and language oral samples, parent interviews, review of previous reports, and classroom observations.
Speech Therapy Sessions
Following an assessment, if treatment is recommended, speech and language therapy services will be scheduled based on the needs of the child. Scheduling can range from weekly to quarterly based on the needs and the ability of the child and family to meet the scheduling requirements. Our sessions will focus on interactive strategies in functional play activities to achieve specific speech and language goals. Family involvement in the therapy process is essential to ensure carryover to other daily living activities so that the child's potential can best be maximized. Parents are considered partners in every aspect of the therapy service and an integral part of development and successful therapy.
Social Skills Groups
Children with social cognition deficits (pragmatics) struggle to establish and maintain social interactions with others. According to research based on surveys of teachers, researchers identified the top 10 socials skills necessary to be successful at school as: listening to others, following rules, ignoring distractions, asking for help, taking turns in conversation, getting along with others, staying calm with others, being responsible for your own behavior, and doing nice things for others. Here at Achieving Better Communication we offer social skills group therapy to assist children with concentration, cooperative play, imitation, and symbolic play skills. Through positive reinforcement, social skills therapy focuses on improving a child’s social awareness, behavioral skills, language and conversation skills, as well as school readiness skills. Each group is designed to best serve the needs of the individual children within. Groups are kept small (3-4 children) so that children are given many opportunities to use the concepts they are learning within each session.