Successful Pilot Program Leads Award-Winning Charter School to Deploy Online Speech Therapy with PresenceLearning
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) February 20, 2014 -- To guarantee more consistent and effective speech-language therapy for its middle and high school students, Synergy Academies, an award-winning urban charter school affiliated with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), has partnered with PresenceLearning, the leader in online speech therapy and other special education-related services for K-12 students. Now, after a successful pilot program, approximately 20 students have online access to highly qualified SLPs who perform evaluations, manage student cases and conduct online therapy sessions.
“Prior to partnering with PresenceLearning, I attended several speech therapy sessions and found that the sessions were not well-aligned with the students' IEP goals,” said Sommer Jones, director of Special Education and Student Services at Synergy Academies. “The sessions were run by a speech-language intern and mainly consisted of a small group of students participating in conversation. It made me wonder what students were getting out of it.”
Jones knew it was time to consider other speech-language therapy options, especially when several students began to resist—or even outright refuse—to attend sessions. Starting in the fall of 2013, Jones agreed to a pilot of PresenceLearning online speech therapy for the reluctant student hoping that the new technology would motivate the student to attend therapy sessions. The highly experienced online SLP from PresenceLearning was able to keep the student engaged in speech therapy exercises, in addition to working academic skills into the session. The move to online speech therapy proved to be very successful for the student, who worked with the online SLP without resistance.
Based on the results of the pilot, Synergy Academies began offering online speech therapy to other high school students and wanted to expand to the middle school as well. The middle school principal, who was hired after the initial PresenceLearning pilot, was apprehensive about using online speech therapy with her students so Jones invited her to observe a high school student’s online therapy session.
“It was the first day of our high school implementation so I was worried that any sort of hiccup would make her veto online speech therapy,” said Jones. “After a smooth first session, she thought it was phenomenal. She was convinced from the first visit that this would be beneficial for all students.”
Using PresenceLearning, 94.4percent of students are making good progress on their Individual Education Plan goals set at the beginning of the school year. In addition, all student IEP meetings are up-to-date and the district has very little compensatory time backlogged.
“Watching the online therapy sessions, it is amazing to see just how engaged the students are,” said Jones. “We can tell they are doing good work because the online SLP has a great rapport with students and students are so at ease with their online SLP.”
Since 2009, PresenceLearning’s online speech therapy services have provided schools with a practical, affordable new option for service delivery: web-based access to a nationwide network of live, highly qualified, fully licensed speech-language pathologists who are available whenever and wherever they are needed. This past year, PresenceLearning added occupational therapy (OT) and online assessments for both speech and OT to their service offering. By partnering with PresenceLearning, school districts can fill staffing gaps related to acute and chronic SLP and OT shortages, reduce high caseloads for onsite personnel, reduce their backlog of assessments, improve student outcomes and become more efficient. PresenceLearning also offers access to technical specialists, as well as culturally and linguistically diverse speech-language pathologists and occupational therapists.
By the end of the 2013-2014 school year, PresenceLearning will have delivered 450,000 live online therapy sessions in public school districts, charter schools and virtual schools of all sizes nationwide.
About PresenceLearning
PresenceLearning (http://www.presencelearning.com) is the leading provider of live online speech therapy services for K-12 students and now offers online occupational therapy as well. The company offers school districts web-based access to a growing, nationwide network of hundreds of highly qualified speech language pathologists (SLPs) and occupational therapists (OTs) via live videoconferencing combined with the latest in evidence-based practices and powerful progress reporting.
Serving thousands of students in public, charter and virtual schools throughout the U.S., PresenceLearning has shown that online therapy is practical, affordable and highly effective. PresenceLearning is an ASHA-approved continuing education provider for SLPs and a U.S. Department of Education grant-winner, dedicated to bringing the highest clinical standards to online therapy.
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Kati Elliott, +1 (410) 975-9638, [email protected]
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