Specialized Services

"BABY SIGN” CLASSES: The speech language pathology department offers courses teaching basic sign language to parents and caregivers. There is a special class designed for adults living or working with special needs children who are either pre-verbal or non-verbal and could benefit from the use of sign language. Studies have shown that sign language reduces the child’s frustration and helps children speak sooner while facilitating linguistic, cognitive and emotional growth.

BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LANGUAGE AND LITERACY: Building blocks is an initiative created by the clinicians at HSDC that provides outreach and education to parents and professionals about the importance of speech and language development on the emergence of literacy skills. In addition, speech and language services are provided to at risk children in our community, birth through five. Community screenings are delivered by speech language pathologists and graduate students. If identified, children receive intervention designed to facilitate literacy development. The ultimate goal of this program is to increase the academic success of these “at risk” children.

SUMMER SPEECH-LANGUAGE PROGRAMS: A variety of different offering that go from four to eight weeks in group formats.