Speechagain Hosts Live Chat with ASHA

New York, New York

Speechagain was honored to host a Live Chat event with ASHA, discussing all things stuttering, as well as the Speechagain program.

Speech Pathologists recently made a quick transition from treating stuttering in-person, to now virtual. Managing this abrupt change can be challenging. Some questions SLPs had were: Where do you find new online speech resources? How can you continue empowering your stuttering clients? What challenges and successes have you found?

During the Live Chat, the panelists discussed the foundation of treating stuttering and the research to support these methods. This included a study of face to face vs online treatment (Wolff von Gudenberg & Euler, 2016) that found no difference in efficacy for either modality. The panelists and attendees problem solved any challenges that SLPs may have been encountering. Attending SLPs built actionable strategies to realize the full potential of children and adults who stutter.

Panelists included:

  • Alexander Wolff von Gudenberg, PhD, Director of PARLO Research Institute
  • Mallory Stempfley, MA, CCC-SLP, Chief of Speech-Language Pathology, Speechagain
  • Michael Blomgren, PhD, CCC-SLP, ASHA-F, Department Chair, University of Utah

Keep reading below for a sneak peek of the chat:

Question 1: What resources would you recommend as “must haves” when working with preschool clients who stutter? Thank You!

Answer: Great question! Speechagain is mainly for adults/young adults, but a children’s program is in the works! I would recommend researching on ASHA and looking to the National Stuttering Association for information. With my experience working with elementary-aged, education was key! We used a lot of technology to provide voice recordings for the client to increase their awareness and hear the “before” and “after”. Also, of course, visuals! Anything that allows them to visualize easing into the word, such as a slide, a train slowly going around a track, moving their finger along a rainbow image, etc.

The main resources for working with children are knowledge about the various approaches. I review the two primary approaches for preschool children: multifactorial treatments and the operant conditioning approaches (e.g., Lidcombe) in a paper I’ve linked below: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240306868_Behavioral_treatments_for_children_and_adults_who_stutter_A_review
Zoom (and its cousins) will be with us forever moving forward. While many of us are “zoom’d out” these days, it really can be a wonderful tool to keep up with parents of preschool and school-aged children who stutter.

Question 2: Question 2: How has COVID impacted speechagain clients? How have you helped them through this difficult time?

Answer: COVID has been interesting for Speechagain. As we were already a digital tool, ourselves and our clients really didn’t need to adapt to anything different. Of course, the impact was felt emotionally though, and possibly even financially. We worked with a lot of our clients to support them in any way that we could. Our team has a great customer service team that even just chats with users when they need a little motivation or support. As a Speechagain family, we all feel connected and supported during this time!

Question 3: How do you deal with multiple SLPs using this on the same client? Should everyone have their own account?

Answer: Mainly all of our users are assigned to just one SLP, and vice versa. We haven’t come across the situation of multiple SLPs sharing one client, but if this were the case I would recommend sharing a Speechagain SLP account. That way the client is only linked to one SLP account and you only have to look to one spot for all the data and information. The account could be created as an institution, such as your practice name, as opposed to using your individual information. Hope that makes sense!

A full transcript of the chat can be found here. 

Big thank you to ASHA for partnering with us!