Involving parents in the speech and language therapy of children with cochlear implants

Abstract

This article examines the professional practices of a speech and language therapist in triadic interaction with children with cochlear implants and their parents. The study aims to provide a more detailed picture of three-party therapy interaction and to describe shifts in participation during the therapy process. Speech and language therapy sessions were video recorded and examined using conversation analysis. The focus of the analysis was on co-operation between the therapist, the parent and the child in triadic task sequences. The analyses showed how the participation and roles of the therapist and the parent changed during the therapy process. The participatory roles changed from therapist-driven task interaction to shared practices between the therapist and parent, and finally lead to parent-driven task interaction. The study reveals the real-life practices of speech and language therapy and introduces the ways in which parents are involved in therapy.

Parent‐directed commentaries during children's hearing habilitation appointments: a practice in family‐centred care

“…It used conversation analysis (CA) to examine SLT appointments with one therapist and three children with HL (Ronkainen et al . ). The study explored how the therapist, over several sessions, coached the parents to support their child's language development by encouraging the parent to take turns and then providing them with feedback on their performance.…”

Parents’ questions to clinicians within paediatric hearing habilitation appointments for children with hearing impairment

“…Question-asking is a primary way in which parents can initiate their own involvement in their child's hearing appointments [18] and is thus an important communication behaviour to understand for the facilitation of FCC within appointments. There has, however, been very little research involving direct observation of family-centred communication practices in paediatric hearing habilitation appointments [19,20], and in particular, no research to date has investigated parents' questions in hearing habilitation appointments with children with HL.…”