Speech therapy

Advocate’s speech-language pathology professionals understand that full or partial loss of speech, or challenges in speech development, can have a devastating impact on self-esteem, performance in school, livelihood and well-being. We work with patients of all ages to restore or improve their ability to speak as well as help them with language, cognitive communication, voice issue and swallowing.

What sets our speech-language pathologists apart:

• Clear objectives: You and your therapist will set goals during a detailed, individualized evaluation
• Personal attention: One-to-one interventions to help restore speech, language, cognitive-communication, voice and swallowing skills
• Timely, engaged follow-up: Periodic reassessment, to ensure your recovery goals are being met and to make modifications if needed

Call 800-3-ADVOCATE to find a therapist or doctor and schedule an appointment, or find a speech-language pathologist location online.

About our speech therapists

Speech-language pathologists (SLP) are often called speech therapists; the terms are used interchangeably.

Advocate’s speech therapists hold, at a minimum:

• A master’s degree in clinical communication science, such as speech pathology
• A license to provide clinical speech therapy services in the state of Illinois
• A Certificate of Clinical Competence from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), a nationally recognized professional organization

Also, our team members regularly participate in additional training and professional development activities to benefit our patients.

Advancing speech-language pathologist care

We provide comprehensive, effective treatment for speech, language and voice disorders, cognitive-communication disorders and dysphagia (swallowing disorders). These problems can affect patients of all ages and often result from:

• Neurological conditions, including stroke
• Head and neck cancer
• Vocal cord disorders, including paralysis, nodules or polyps
• Traumatic brain injury

By treating and teaching strategies to compensate for these conditions, speech therapists help patients alleviate vocal impairments, swallowing issues, unclear speech, difficulty finding words and problems with memory and problem-solving.

Pediatric speech therapy

Our pediatric speech-language pathologists work with children and adolescents who exhibit problems with speech, language and/or feeding due to a developmental delay, motor delay or injury. Our speech pathologists can address a wide variety of speech-language and related disorders appearing in young people, including:

• Acquired neurological disorders
• Articulation and phonological disorders (affecting sound production)
• Expressive and receptive language disorders, including aphasia
• Motor speech disorders, including dysarthria and apraxia
• Feeding and swallowing disorders
• Hearing impairments
• Dysfluency (stuttering)

Recognizing the powerful social impact of speech problems on younger patients, our speech therapists supplement in-office interventions with education and home exercise to maximize overall voice quality and enhance a child's self-esteem.

Tools & technology we use

Whether our speech pathologists are treating a child's swallowing issue or helping a cancer survivor regain independence after a total laryngectomy, Advocate uses up-to-date, technology-assisted interventions to diagnose and treat speech and swallowing disorders.

Speech and voice disorders:

• Alaryngeal speech training for laryngectomy patients, including esophageal speech, the electrolarynx and the tracheoesophageal voice prosthesis
• Computerized voice assessment, using Visipitch acoustic analysis
• Lee Silverman Voice Treatment: For Parkinson's disease and other neuromuscular speech disorders
• Video-stroboscopic examination of the larynx

Swallowing disorders:

• Videofluoroscopy exam
• Vital Stimulation, a type of targeted electrical stimulation therapy
• Fiber-optic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES)