Speech-Language and Occupational Therapy

Speech-Language Therapy focuses specifically on how children communicate.

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) assess, diagnose and treat the various skills needed for communication. These include:

• Articulation and phonology
• Auditory processing
• Cognition
• Executive functioning skills
• Fluency
• Language expression—Verbal and augmentative/alternative
• Oral motor movement
• Pragmatic-social language skills
• Reading and spelling
• Writing

The JCFS Integrated Pediatric Therapies team also addresses feeding and swallowing concerns including:

• Oral-Motor Skills
• Sensory Aversion
• Medical Complex Feeding needs including decreasing feeding tube dependency

Our SLPs are known for working together with the family to develop dynamic and functional goals for a child to be successful. We believe that helping a family to communicate with their child is just as important as giving a child vocabulary and teaching them sentence structures. Let our therapists support your child throughout their development in the areas of language development, reading and comprehension, social skills and feeding. We will work with your doctor, school and other therapists to generalize skills across your child’s natural environments.

For more information or to make an appointment, please email ipi@jcfs.org or call 847.412.4379.

Additional Resources:

American Speech-Language Hearing Association

Identify The Signs of Communication Disorders

A child’s primary “job” or “occupation” is to play.

A child’s primary “job” or “occupation” is to play. Through play, children develop motor coordination, social skills, emotional regulation, as well as learn how to process all of the sensory input in their environment.

Occupational therapists evaluate children in four primary areas to determine a delay or difficulty in skills: cognitive or our thinking processes (cause/effect, problem-solving, reasoning), sensory processing, behavioral development and motor skills.

Occupational Therapy works with children on their ability to perform everyday activities, such as tying shoes and handwriting, motor skills, as well as individual sensory needs, as the video below demonstrates.

For additional information or to ask about making an appointment, please email ipi@jcfs.org or call 847.412.4379.