AAC and Telehealth
Let’s be honest, the COVID-19 global pandemic has definitely taken its toll on us.
Especially for people who heavily rely on health services for their daily activities and participation - such as individuals with complex communication needs (CCN) who cannot use their natural speech to get a message across. Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) is a means of communicating where devices, systems, strategies and tools substitute or foster natural speech (Assistive Ware, 2021). People with CCN can express their wants and needs, participate, have relationships and connect (Therapy Focus, 2021) in this way. This form of communication can be broken into 2 groups - Unaided AAC, where a physical aid or tool is not required, and aided AAC where tools and materials are required (Assistive Ware, 2021). A Speech Pathologist (SP) assesses and ensures the most appropriate AAC system is given and provides training to the person with CCN and their communication partners (Therapy Focus, 2021). This works to allow communication within “functional contexts” for example, at home, school, in the community, therapy sessions etc.
However, due to this current global situation, face to face AAC service delivery has shifted online, known as telehealth/tele-therapy/tele-AAC. This may sound daunting to some parents, when really, it isn’t! It just requires practice and patience. In fact, researchers have discovered that the same outcomes can be achieved when language and/or speech interventions are provided face-to-face or online (Grogan-Johnson et al., 2013, Hall et al, 2014). There’s just a little bit of a twist - instead of the SP leading the session, we use a caregiver-led approach (Pujol et al., 2020). This is when the SP facilitates the caregiver by coaching them on how to support their child’s needs at home using their AAC (Pujol et al., 2020) which is great, as it increases the caregiver’s engagement (Biggs et al., 2019). Research has also informed us that caregiver-implemented language interventions encourage the development of language in young children with special needs (Roberts & Kaiser, 2016). Parents/caregivers have even reported that the tele-AAC model increased their confidence in programming and implementing the prescribed AAC system when teaching their child (Pujol et al., 2020).
Does this sound like something you would want to try out for yourself?
