Press Herald interviews Walker about Speech Therapy Telepractice Program

Judy Walker, an associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Maine, spoke with the Portland Press Herald for an article about the Speech Therapy Telepractice program she founded five years ago. In her former role as the chairperson of the department, Walker said she was regularly getting calls from schools asking for help with speech therapy for students with autism and other special needs. In a rural state like Maine, it can be prohibitively expensive for schools to provide that kind of support for students, she said. “It’s very clear no matter how fast we produce bodies, we’re never going to keep up with demographic trends of both aging and incidents of childhood disabilities and so on,” Walker said, noting the program has a waiting list of patients. “We had to think about a way we could deliver speech therapy in a very efficient way.” The program connects people who need speech therapy with professional therapists through online video conferencing technology. It now serves 40 clients — schoolchildren and adults — who work with four or five UMaine students and a supervisor, according to the article. Walker said she hopes to expand the program through UMaine’s age-in-place initiative that aims to help seniors stay in their homes, such as those who have suffered from strokes that left them with aphasia, a term for brain damage that affects the ability to communicate. Sarah Hunt, a UMaine graduate student who works primarily with schoolchildren in the program, said her challenge was translating her “three-dimensional skillset” into a computer program. “The telepractice piece has a higher focus (that) comes back to innovative problem-solving and engaging a child in a different way,” she said.

From UMaine News.