When children are struggling in school, it’s important to find out why. It may be that a disability is affecting your child’s educational performance. If so, your child may be eligible for special education and related services that can help. To learn more about special education, keep reading. This section will help you learn how you and the school can work together to help your child.
The school may need to try sufficient interventions in the regular education classroom and modify instructional techniques before referring your child for special education evaluation.

Special education is instruction that is specially designed to meet the unique needs of children who have disabilities. Special education and related services are provided in public schools at no cost to the parents and can include special instruction in the classroom, at home, in hospitals or institutions, or in other settings. This definition of special education comes from IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This law gives eligible children with disabilities the right to receive special services and assistance in school.
More than 6.8 million children ages 3 through 21 receive special education and related services each year in the United States. Each of these children receives instruction that is specially designed:
-> To meet his or her unique needs (that result from having a disability)
-> To help the child learn the information and skills that other children are learning in the general education curriculum.

Children with disabilities are eligible for special education and related services when they meet IDEA’s definition of a “child with a disability” in combination with state and local policies. IDEA’s definition of a “child with a disability” lists 13 different disability categories under which a child may be found eligible for special education and related services. IDEA describes what each of these disability categories means.

Our speech therapists are highly trained with specialties in speech intelligibility (articulation, phonological processing, and apraxia), oral motor, receptive and expressive language of toddlers, preschoolers and school age children, pragmatic language, fluency, and speech and language deficits related to all disabilities categories.

A screening is a more general look at a child's skills to determine if they are age appropriate. During a screening, a therapist looks for red flags indicating that a more in depth evaluation in needed.
An evaluation is a detailed examination of a child strengths and weaknesses to determine if skills are at age level, and what deterrents to the development of age appropriate skills may be present. Our skilled evaluators use the knowledge gleaned from the evaluation as a blueprint for treatment, and continuously evaluate the child throughout therapy to determine if treatment is effective and if changes in the therapeutic plan need to be made.

Please call our office and our courteous staff will be happy to give you information regarding our competitive rates.

The duration of therapy is highly individual depending on various factors including but not limited to:
-> Severity of difficulties child is experiencing at the start of therapy
-> Consistency of attendance
-> Parents'/teachers'/other caregivers' ability to incorporate goals into daily routines.
-> Motivation: ARG therapists work hard to make therapy sessions meaningful and fun so that children are motivated to participate in activities, leading to more effective therapy.