Having a speech therapy private practice allows you to specialize in the populations you are most interested in and capable of helping!
This post is part of a series about how I've built a pediatric small speech therapy private practice in Brooklyn, NY. I am the sole proprietor and SLP of a professional service limited liability company (PLLC). I started it in 2020 -- without taking any expensive courses -- and it is going strong! I hope to share some of the things I've learned with other SLPs who may be curious about starting their own private practice.
School-based SLPs see it all and treat it all; they can be tasked with supporting kids with a wide range of difficulties spanning different age groups, including stuttering, apraxia of speech and other speech sound disorders, social communication disorders, developmental language disorder, executive functioning difficulties, written language difficulties, AAC and other assistive tech, and much more. SLPs also support students with brain differences like ASD, ADHD, and dyslexia.
It's no wonder that many school-based SLPs refer to themselves as a "jack of all trades, master of none."
In addition, it's often left up to the SLP to do whatever research is needed to get themselves up to speed when they need to provide treatment in an area they're not super experienced or comfortable in.
(Amazingly, SLPs often rise to the occasion!)
But it's not always the best feeling. We all want to provide the best therapy we can for our students and it feels uncomfortable when we're not confident about the best way forward.
The truth is, our field is so vast that it's impossible to specialize in every issue that we will be asked to treat in a school setting!
One of the reasons I started my speech therapy private practice was to have the freedom to choose clients I was sure I could help. For me, that has meant working with elementary school-aged kids with DLD, dyslexia, and speech sound disorders. These are topics I am interested in; I feel driven to research and explore them (as you can probably tell from my blog posts!) and, because of this, I know I can provide high-quality therapy that is based on the most up-to-date research and strategies.
I let everyone in my network know that I specialize in these areas, which makes it increasingly likely that I'll get these types of referrals. And getting to work with even more of my preferred cases allows me to get even better at treating them!
Specializing in specific populations has made me a more confident therapist too.
LEVEL UP YOUR SPEECH THERAPY ACTIVITIES WITH STORYWHYS
Did you enjoy this blog post? Subscribe below to get the latest blog posts, which feature lots of speech therapy ideas for busy SLPs who want to provide fun, impactful, and meaningful speech-language therapy.
Have you heard? StoryWhys now offers the Speech and Spell series of resources. I am always trying to tie articulation work and spelling together in my therapy and I've never found any good resources out there to help me do this. So I made my own! Many more speech sounds and spelling rules to come. They'll be 50% off for 48 hrs when new resources are added to the StoryWhys store. Find them here.
Did you know book companions can be among the best speech therapy materials for elementary students? Explore all of the StoryWhys book companions for speech therapy in my store. You'll find comprehensive book companions that target many different language skills or Spotlight Series book companions that focus on one type of skill, all using high-quality, beloved storybooks.
And get your FREE, 71-page book companion for speech therapy on the Free Download page.
Enjoy!
Comments