Zoe

Thanks to Heartspring’s outreach program, the Target Early Literacy Project, four year old Zoe is getting the speech help she needs to better communicate with the world. A generous grant from Target allows Heartspring therapists and clinicians to enter the Wichita community and conduct free hearing and speech screenings at area preschools and daycare centers. Heartspring’s Target Early Literacy Project was designed to identify pre-kindergarten children at risk of language learning problems and give parents information on what resources are available to help them.

“I knew that it was hard to understand certain words, but I thought it was just her age,” said Zoe’s mom, Kandi. Zoe received a free screening at a local child care center. Kandi was happy to agree to the screening. “My thought was, if there was an issue I’d rather know about it now.”

Zoe’s screening revealed speech deficits, so after a full evaluation at Heartspring Pediatric Services, she began working with speech-language pathologist Diane Gough in August 2007. “We all have to move our muscles in and around our mouth in an amazingly precise way to produce all of our speech sounds well,” said Gough. “Zoe’s muscles aren’t being as precise as she needs to be to make all speech sounds without distorting them.”

In just a few weeks Zoe has made progress as a result of her therapy. “We don’t have tiny little weights to use to increase her tongue strength for example,” said Gough, “But we do have some fun ways to get children to use their muscles more and, in effect, ‘pump them up’.” Kandi said that Zoe enjoys the straw and horn exercises that help build her speech muscles. “For Zoe it’s a fun time of us doing something together at home or with Diane at Heartspring.”

Kandi is grateful that Heartspring extended its services into the community through the screening project. “Because Heartspring does outreach programs, it catches the people that might fall through the cracks. I probably wouldn’t have come in for an evaluation on my own because I could always understand her as a mother. Unless her pediatrician or a teacher would’ve said something, I probably wouldn’t have caught it.”

According to Cyndi Chapman, Heartspring’s director of pediatric services, early intervention is vital in enhancing skills for children with developmental delays. “If we identify one child to receive early intervention therapy, helping them get ready for school and/or decrease their needs in school through these screenings, then we’ve done our job. Every child is important to Heartspring and given the opportunity, we want to make a difference in every child’s life that we can.”