Welcome to Week 1 in the Speech Therapy Makeover series! I’m challenging myself to “make over” some traditional therapy tasks so they will be more person-centered (functional, meaningful, and relevant for the people we work with). We know that person-centered care offers the best results across the board for outcomes, patient satisfaction, and efficiency of meeting goals. Plus, what’s the point of speech therapy if we aren’t making a difference in the everyday lives of those we treat?

Week 1 Speech Therapy Makeover Task: Naming furniture in 1 minute (known in my world as verbal fluency) Also related: Naming animals, Naming states.

The Challenge: Research has shown that the most efficient way to gain back language is to practice the language someone needs to use. We are most likely to make a difference in someone’s everyday life if we use/practice/demonstrate/model with the actual words the Person we treat wants and needs to use.  For many people, naming furniture may not be at the top of the goal list, so why not adjust this task to be person-centered?

Person-Centered Ideas: If your Person works at a furniture store, or spends most of their day rearranging a living room, naming furniture might be a high priority. If your Person works at a zoo or drives a Safari bus, naming animals may be a great practice in speech therapy. Or, if they need to direct airplanes all over the country, go ahead and practice naming states.

BUT. For most people, naming furniture (states / boys’ names / animals ) is not related to a high-needs person-centered goal. What about personalizing this task according to what your Person wants/needs to talk about? Thinking about myself, I would want to practice naming spices, grocery ingredients, kitchen utensils, favorite recipes, etc., because cooking for my family is an important part of my daily life (See Cooking Packet for more ideas!). For the person you work with, it will most likely be something unique to them! The sky is the limit with what specific verbal fluency task you can set as a goal with your Person–it’s all about what they want to say. In my sessions, we often work on names of loved ones as a lower-level goal (grandkids, kids, neighbors, etc.), but I’ve also had people heading back to work and we spend our time discussing machinery equipment parts or dog kennel commands or whatever it is that needs to be said. Consider broad categories to help you narrow down what fluency tasks you could practice:

*Family topics: Grandkids, Pets’ names, Vacation places, Friends or neighbors, Emotion words. See Conversation Partner Training Packet if you need inspiration! This is also a great way to functionally use Response Elaboration Training.

*Hobby topics: Plants in the garden, Tools in the shed, Supplies/Equipment at work, Coworkers’ names, Favorite golf courses, Favorite movies, Professional hockey teams. See the Back To Work Series if you want higher-level inspiration!

*Home topics: Favorite recipes, Neighborhood streets or businesses, Cleaning products you buy, Rooms in the home/building, Phone apps, Local repair businesses, Things to do on a rainy day, Most watched TV shows or Netflix series. See the Home Sweet Home Series for tons of personally-relevant topic ideas!

Setting Goals: Instead of writing a generic goal (“Verbal fluency will improve to 12 items/minute), I have been writing more person-centered goals for the past few years (“The patient will name 6 grandkids using naming strategies independently, compared to baseline of 3 at evaluation.” or “The patient will name 8 golf courses using communication notebook independently, compared to 0 at time of evaluation.”). If you want to learn about writing better person-centered goals, check out the Writing Functional Goals Packet.

Thanks for reading! If you would like more person-centered therapy ideas, please check out my Shop. Be sure to follow on Facebook , Pinterest, Instagram or sign up for email updates to receive the series right in your inbox. If you have any ideas of speech therapy tasks you think need a “makeover”, email me at [email protected].