I met L in October 2013 and he had no functional vocal communication. He has had 10 hours per week of in-home sessions since then, and I can see him graduating within a year or so. That is exciting in itself, but I received an email last week from the school speech-language pathologist who began working with my client (in Kindergarten now) at the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year.“I wanted to reach out to you about L. I evaluated his language skills today using the OWLS-2. He did really great with this assessment. I was able to get an understanding of the parts of speech he is understanding and using. When we initially met [January 2016] I was not sure how he was going to do using this evaluation and thought I may need to use a more simple evaluation (preschool language test) to get a true sign of where his language skills fall. After the assessment today I no longer feel that is necessary as the OWLS-2 provided strong data related to L’s receptive and expressive language skills.I would like to talk with you about goal areas. He has a strong foundation of language skills and I want to be sure to create a goal that gives us the most bang for our buck so to say. I will score the test this afternoon and review some grade level language goals for L but any input from you would be very helpful!”
His progress is due entirely to the therapists from AHSS that work in the home with him, especially Breanna Piazza who worked with him the longest and continues to train new CTMs on the team. I must also say that his parents are a pleasure to interact with as well. Learning that other professionals who work with our clients acknowledge our input and also see our clients grow is why we do what we do!by Johnna Soler, MA, BCBA and Lead BCBA with AHSS
