Clinic provides free services for children

Language disorders in focus

BY LYNN ADAIR
Staff Writer

The Tulsa Scottish Rite Clinic for Childhood Language Disorders provides free testing and therapy to children who have specific communication problems.

Children aged 18 months to 11 years with communications problems such as talking, hearing, reading, writing, understanding and remembering are considered to receive the services the clinic offers. However, to be eligible for services, the problems the children have cannot be the result of permanent hearing loss, emotion al disturbance, autism or an Intellectual handicap.

"When a child is referred to us, we get specific information about the child's problem and other information to determine if the child is eligible for our services," said Adrienne Rains Rogers, the clinic director. "Income has no place in our eligibility criteria."

If the child is eligible, the parents are sent case history and release forms, which they fill out and return, Rogers said.

"When the forms are returned, we evaluate them. If it looks like the child will need just one consultation, we see the child and make recommendations and/or referrals," she said. "But if it looks like the child will need longer therapy, then we can put the child on the waiting list for those services."

The average waiting time is about three months, she added.  "In the mean time, the child is eligible to have his hearing tested by an audiologist," Rogers said.

Eligible children are provided individual services and therapies based on testing designed to help them; their parents are trained in Home Therapy Management.

Home Therapy Management is a program in which the parents are taught effective methods of helping the child at home.

The child is seen at the clinic regularly for testing or therapy as needed.  "We work with the child and we teach the parents how to work with the child at home," Rogers said. "It's an effective method of working with the children. It also allows us to help more kids that way."

Children continue in the pro gram until they are 12 years old or until they "graduate," she added.

Graduation is when the child has improved and reaches the normal range of skill for his or her age, she said.

"Although every child is individual and requires different therapies to help his problem, the aver age time a child is in therapy is about two years," Rogers said. Rogers and the two other therapists at the clinic hold master's degrees in speech-language pathology and are certified by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association. They also are licensed to practice in Oklahoma. The clinic, which is has been operating since 1977, is a charitable project of the Tulsa Scottish Rite Charitable and Educational Foundation and is funded entirely by the foundation.