Austin made great progress while in therapy. He not only increased his fluency greatly in therapy with me, he also improved while talking to unfamiliar people in our clinic. Austin became confident while speaking at home and at school. When he did have days of increased stuttering, he was able to reflect and understand what vulnerabilities he may have had that contributed to his dysfluency. Austin spontaneously used appropriate breath groups, pull-outs, and cancellations while speaking. When he finished his 16 visits, he was more than 95% fluent in conversational speech.

This speech grant for our 9yr old daughter who has Down Syndrome is a huge blessing and will help her communicate better with her peers and teachers. We were almost to the point of having to stop her therapy because our insurance wasn’t covering it.

Small Steps in Speech:

Thank you SO much for allowing XX to attend Camp Shout Out for his second summer. Because of his family’s limited means he would not have been able to attend without a scholarship from Small Steps in Speech.

Yesterday when I told Cason that he would be returning to speech, he jumped and yelled, “Yes!”. It is the generosity of your organization that gives children to reach their potential.

Child X, who will receive the therapy that your award provides, has faced very serious and very tragic circumstances, made even worse by the consideration that she is not yet five years old. Your generous gift will provide her with critical skills that will help her to build the foundation she needs to live a successful and happy life.

When a diagnosis of autism happens to a middle class family the helpless, desperate feeling that you have is heartwrenching. We once thought we had "GREAT" health insurance- until a diagnosis of autism pretty much shuts us out. The therapy you have granted us will help us so much and I just wanted to thank you and your wonderful organization.

I am writing this letter to thank you for giving my son the opportunity of acquiring language and speech. He will be able to communicate his basic needs and achieve his potential through this grant.

Our school district couldn't afford summer school and our insurance wouldn't cover therapy.  You can imagine our excitement when we found out about Small Steps in Speech, applied for the grant, and eventually received a grant to pay for 15 weeks of therapy!!

When we arrived a the Kaufman Children's Center in Detroit, Amanda only had single word spontaneous speech and that was limited to approximately 50 words and were not very intelligible by anyone. After working for 4 days with Nancy Kaufman, Amanda now has some 3 word sentences and is more intelligible to others. She has a long road to travel to become resolved, however, because of the grant you gave her which allowed us to bring her to the Kaufman Children's Center, she now has a better opportunity to become an effective speaker one day.

She knows what she wants to say but she can not get her lips, tongue, and vocal cords to work together to form sounds into words. In therapy, Kyra is learning to make speech sounds as she plays with a variety of toys, e.g. saying "ba ba" as blocks fall down and go boom, saying "hi" as Jack pops out of a box.