Posts Tagged by Prompt

– I’m not necessarily writing about each session in the order that we attended.  These are my thoughts after hearing each of these speakers and should not be construed as a summary of each speaker’s presentation. –

The first session we attended Friday morning was The Prompt Approach: An Overview presented by Deborah Hayden, MA, CCC-SLP who is the Executive Director and Founder of the PROMPT Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Ms. Hayden developed the PROMPT method (Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets).  There is an interesting history here about the development of this method.

PROMPT was not developed specifically for children with CAS and is also used with adults with Acquired Apraxia of Speech as well as other speech disordered populations.  It differs in the more traditional type of speech therapy which relies particularly on auditory and visual input.  PROMPT requires the practitioner to actually touch the patient’s face to give them tactile cues about which muscles and parts of the mouth, tongue, neck, and throat to move when speaking.  If done correctly, these tactile cues are eventually faded.

In my experience prior to this conference, I have found that the speech therapists that we have seen who have treated E have either relied on the Kaufman Speech to Language Protocol (K-SLP) or the PROMPT method.  I now know that these are not the only two choices.  (More on that later).

Speech therapists that choose to undergo extensive training can become certified in PROMPT.  Go here to find speech therapists in your area who have received training.  Other speech therapists may undergo even further training and may become certified PROMPT instructors as well.  Ms. Hayden primarily lectures now and no longer teaches training sessions.  How lucky for us to receive an overview by the creator of PROMPT!

E’s current private speech therapist is trained in PROMPT but has not completed enough sessions to be certified.  My husband and I chose this session to attend so that we could learn more about the type of therapy E is receiving,

There is not enough research about CAS.  However, there is research showing the effectiveness of PROMPT on people with motor speech disorders – CAS is one of them.

We were shown videos of children with CAS in PROMPT therapy sessions.  We were also able to watch Ms. Hayden do some of the PROMPT cues on herself.  I can’t imagine how good she must be at this to do this movements on herself as well as from behind the patient in one of the videos.

The main thing that I came away with from this presentation was that PROMPT is a holistic approach to speech therapy.  The practitioner will not always have his or her hands on the patient.  In children specifically, attention and waiting need to be learned in order for PROMPT to be most successful.  Furthermore, it is extremely important that the patient TRUST the practitioner.  The practitioner will, after all, have their hands all over the patients face, mouth, and throat.  It is important for the practitioner to meet the child were they are at – both developmentally as well as interest wise.  The patient needs to be motivated, trusting, and learn turn taking and waiting.

Even though our private speech therapist is not PROMPT certified, I came away feeling good about the way she approaches E.  E likes her and trusts her which is so important – especially when you consider that E has now seen 11 speech therapists regularly over the last two and half years.  I left the session knowing that PROMPT requires a high level of training, which neither my husband not I have, but that we know enough about it to recognize when someone is practicing it appropriately.