Speech Evaluations are a critical process in understanding your child's unique strengths and challenges. At NeuroKids, we try to make our evaluation process as straightforward and as easy-to-understand as possible.
Here are the steps we will take to evaluate your child and prepare your family for ongoing Speech Therapy:
The entire process begins with you filling out the Get Started form on our website.
Once you fill that out, someone from our team will email you back as soon as possible to get more information, answer your questions, and ultimately get you ready for the next step.
You will schedule an evaluation with Kristen (our CEO).
While we recommend in-person evaluations, we'll try our best to accomodate your circumstances.
You will then have your evaluation on your scheduled date.
Never heard of a Speech Evaluation before? Curious what's involved? Click here or keep scrolling to learn more.
After your evaluation, you will then schedule ongoing weekly Speech Therapy for your child.
The evaluation's recommendation includes frequency (how many sessions per week) and duration (30-minute, 45-minute, or 60-minute sessions).
These recommendations are given specifically for your child, based on the results of the evaluation.
Your family's Speech Therapy journey begins here!
Speech Therapy can take place:
At our office in Folsom
In your home*
Your child’s private school / daycare / preschool*
Online (if you are located in California)
*Only if located in or near Folsom, California. If distance is outside of our driving radius, a drive fee will be added. You will be informed of this drive fee before beginning Speech Therapy.
A speech and language evaluation is a comprehensive assessment used to understand a child's unique communication strengths and challenges. It is based on clinical observations, parent report and interview, and standardized assessments (when appropriate).
The evaluation serves as a roadmap to determine if therapy is warranted and to create a customized plan tailored to your child's needs and everyday life. This plan includes therapy recommendations (frequency - how many times a week, and duration - 30-minute, 45-minute, or 60-minute sessions), goals that will be addressed in therapy, and any other recommendations that were found during the evaluation.
We cannot build a customized plan for your child without first understanding their unique strengths and challenges. The evaluation serves three primary purposes:
To Identify Current/Baseline Skills: It helps us pinpoint exactly what your child is capable of right now, and where they might be getting stuck.
To Uncover the "Why": If a child is struggling to talk, follow directions, or be understood, the evaluation helps us figure out the root cause (e.g., is it difficulty making specific sounds, understanding vocabulary, or social communication, etc.).
To Create a Custom Game Plan: If therapy is recommended, the evaluation results allow us to write specific, meaningful goals tailored to your child’s everyday life and your family's needs.
Communication is complex! During the evaluation, here are several different areas we can look at, depending on the area(s) of concern:
How your child understands language (following directions, pointing to pictures, understanding questions).
How your child uses language (words, gestures, or sentences to express their wants, needs, and ideas).
How clearly your child says their sounds and how easily they are understood by family and others.
How your child uses language to interact with others (making eye contact, taking turns, sharing attention, verbally engaging, etc.).
How your child engages with toys and people, which is the foundation for early language and cognitive development.
How your child speaks fluently or dysfluently (often referred to as “stuttering”), including smoothness, rhythm and flow of their speech.
