Our Speech Services

We use language to share our thoughts, needs and ideas with others. When a child struggles with getting his or her meaning across through speech, writing, or gestures they may have a language disorder.

An expressive language disorder is a difficulty with verbally communicating your thoughts and ideas. A receptive language disorder is a difficulty understanding other people.

Some children may have difficulty with both, which is called a mixed receptive-expressive language disorder. A child may demonstrate a language delay when their receptive or expressive communication skills are below those expected for their age. This can limit their ability to effectively communicate with others and often causes frustration. Their language skills may develop later, slower or in a different order than typical patterns of language development.

At Beluga Speech Services, we can help by:

Assessing all areas of your child’s language abilities (receptive, expressive, reading and writing) informally and formally using standardized testing.

Providing therapy to target the language areas to be improved.

Counseling families and providing parent-training programs to teach language stimulation strategies.

Articulation is the process by which words and sounds are formed when the lips, tongue, jaw, teeth, and palate modify the air coming through the vocal folds. Articulation disorders occur when children have difficulty producing speech sounds correctly (e.g., saying “thun” instead of “sun”, or “wain” instead of “rain”). If a child struggles with several articulation errors, family, friends or teachers may have trouble understanding what they are saying, and their message may not be communicated clearly.

Phonology is the system of contrasting sounds that gives a language its most basic meaning. A phonological disorder is when a child demonstrates a pattern of speech sound errors (e.g. omitting the ending or beginning sounds of words).

At Beluga Speech Services, we can help by:

Assessing your child’s articulation skills and identifying the specific sound(s) they are producing incorrectly; as well as whether any errors are due to a specific phonological process (a pattern of speech sound error).

Determining whether the sound errors are age-appropriate or not.

Recommending and implementing a therapy plan to treat the articulation or phonological difficulties.

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (AOS) is a rare but severe motor speech disorder that affects less than 1% of children. Children with AOS struggle to speak clearly because their brains have difficulty planning and coordinating the movements of their lips, tongue and jaw. They often do not babble as infants and begin talking much later than their peers. When children with apraxia do speak, it can be very hard for others to understand them.

At Beluga Speech Services, we can help by:

Providing specialized, intensive speech therapy that will support your child’s ability to learn the movement patterns required for speech.

Literacy skills encompass all the abilities needed for reading and writing. Some early literacy or “pre-reading” skills involve awareness of the sounds of language, awareness of print, and the relationship between letters and sounds. Other literacy skills include vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension. A child may demonstrate a written language disorder if they have a significant difficulty in reading, writing and/or spelling. Reading disorders include difficulty decoding (pairing sounds with letters), recognizing words, reading fluently and comprehending written work. Writing disorders include difficulty with written expression, organization of ideas and spelling. Children who have a history of speech or language difficulties often go on to struggle with reading or writing skills.

At Beluga Speech Services, we can help by:

Assessing your child’s written skills using formal and informal reading and writing tasks.

Evaluating “pre-reading” and “phonological awareness” skills (e.g., ability to identify the beginning, middle and end sounds of words; to produce rhymes; identify number of syllables, etc.)

Suggesting accommodations (tools to help learn the same curriculum) and modifications (changes to the curriculum) that can be made at school to help compensate for reading or writing disorders.

Conducting therapy sessions to target and improve reading and writing difficulties.

Suggesting the use of graphic organizers or writing aids to assist with written tasks at school or in the community.

Working with educators to help support your child’s reading and writing success at school.

Auditory processing refers to the way the brain interprets sound information from the ears. To put it simply: it is what the brain does with what the ears hear. The brain processes many aspects of auditory information collected from the ears, such as determining where a sound is coming from; distinguishing speech from other noise; recognizing the differences between sounds and remembering them; and recognizing patterns in sounds, to name a few. An auditory processing disorder (APD) refers to problems in the perceptual processing of the auditory information in the brain. Someone with APD may have no hearing loss but have difficulty understanding spoken language in a meaningful way. Children with APD often demonstrate:

• poor listening skills

• problems differentiating similar-sounding speech sounds

• difficulty paying attention to and remembering information

• trouble following multi-step directions

• difficulty listening in noise

• more time needed to process information

• poor organization of verbal material

• trouble with reading, comprehension, spelling and vocabulary

• low academic performance

At Beluga Speech Services, we can help by:

Assessing your child’s language and listening skills.

Recommending referral for a hearing assessment by an audiologist; and discussing findings with you.

Tailoring a treatment plan based on your child’s specific needs, which may focus on strengthening language skills, problem-solving ability, memory, attention and/or other cognitive (thinking) skills to help manage the disorder.

Provide suggestions for adjusting your child’s classroom and/or home environment to reduce distracting noises; and support better hearing and attention.

Training family members and educators on how to communicate with your child in a way that supports their auditory processing abilities.

Stuttering (also known as a “fluency disorder”) is a speech disorder where involuntary breaks in the flow of speech (“disfluencies”) are overly present in an individual's speech, impacting their ability to communicate effectively. These breaks in fluency are also sometimes accompanied by struggling behaviors (e.g. rapid eye blinks, tremors, tension in the body, etc.). There are several different types of disfluencies such as blocks (stops or pauses in speech), prolongations (prolonged sounds) and repetitions (repeating syllables, parts of words or the whole word).

At Beluga Speech Services, we can help by:

Assessing your child’s stuttering and analyzing the types and number of disfluencies in their speech.

Recommending and implementing a treatment plan to improve your child’s fluency.

Providing education about direct and indirect strategies that can manage their disfluencies.

Suggesting local support groups and resources in your area.

Voice disorders occur when voice quality, pitch, and loudness are found to be atypical for an individual's gender, age, cultural background, or geographic location. They can be caused by physical changes of the vocal folds (aka “vocal chords”) due to growths, injury or other illnesses, neurological changes or disorders that affect how the voice mechanism is functioning, or from improper/inefficient use of the vocal mechanism even when the structure is normal.

At Beluga Speech Services, we can help by:

Conducting screenings of the different characteristics of your child’s voice, such as respiration (breathing), phonation (the production of sound caused by the vibration of the vocal folds), resonance (the amplification, richness and quality of your voice), vocal range and flexibility.

Identifying behaviours that are contributing to the voice problems.

Recommending further imaging of the larynx to view vocal fold vibration.

Providing therapy and strategies such as adequate vocal hygiene (e.g. keeping hydrated, avoiding clearing the throat, etc.) to improve the voice disorder.