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As I mentioned a few posts ago, Grow has grown! Our two new clinicians have been getting familiarized with the clinic and our clients and have been having a great time engaging in fun therapy sessions over the past month. Please meet our second new clinician, Catherine, who has come all the way from England! Due to the recertification process, she is currently only working as an SLP assistant, though she is certified as a Speech Therapist in the UK. We're hoping her Canadian recertification process should be finished in the summer. For more about Catherine, read on!  Where did you go to school and how long have you been practicing?
I studied at Leeds Beckett University in the UK and graduated in 2013. I worked as an SLP in the UK for 5 and a half years. Since moving to Canada in July 2019, I have been working as a remedial teacher for students with language-based learning disabilities and am thrilled to now also be working with Amanda. What made you decide to become an SLP? I have an older brother with Down Syndrome. My family used a form of sign language called Makaton to help him to communicate before he started speaking verbally when he was around 5 years old. He also has a severe stutter, but due to a shortage of SLPs, he was unable to receive ongoing support for his language skills and his stutter. This inspired me to become an SLP so that more people can be supported with their speech, language and communication skills. What is your favorite thing to work on in therapy? Social Skills! I love helping children to work on their social communication skills so that they find it easier to navigate the idiosyncrasies of the social world they are living in. It's lovely to watch the children I work with to feel more at ease with understanding both their own and other people's body language, thoughts and emotions. What is your favorite thing about being an SLP? I can't decide between 2 favourites! 1) The moments when the children I work with begin to notice their progress and surprise themselves with their newly developed skills. The pride they feel and their growth in confidence makes the job so rewarding. 2) The amount I learn from children whom I work with. They open my eyes to new ways of thinking, providing different perspectives and helping me to continue growing both as a person and as a professional. What is an area you'd like to learn more about? For a long time I have been interested to learn more about how and why certain difficulties with cognition, language and social-emotional skills sometimes tend to occur together. One day I would love to research learning disabilities in greater depth to understand the different areas of the brain that affect these areas of development. What do you like to do when you aren't helping kids improve their communication skills? Vancouver is a prime spot for exploring the great outdoors! It is also a prime spot for rain. On sunny days I love to spend time exploring this wonderful city and hiking through the beautiful nature that surrounds it. On rainy days I can be found with my head in a book, sipping herbal tea and eating chocolate.
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We have exciting news over at Grow! Two new clinicians have come on board this month and are ready to bring the fun in speech and language learning. Currently they're only on Fridays, but they'll be expanding in the future. So if you're looking for an SLP, now is the time! For the first time in awhile, Grow doesn't have a waitlist. So, without further ado, let's meet our first new SLP on the staff, Ashley Debrouwere!  Where did you go to school and how long have you been practicing?
I received my undergraduate degree from the University of Manitoba in linguistics and psychology. From there, I went on to complete my Master of Science Degree in Speech Language Pathology from Minnesota State University Moorhead. I have been practicing for about four years now, and have been enjoying every minute of it! After graduating, I worked for a private practice in North Dakota, and then moved back home to Winnipeg to work in the public sector at a hospital, serving mostly preschool aged clients. Now that I have moved to Vancouver, I am working both in a school, and part-time with Grow. What made you decide to become an SLP? I always knew I wanted a career where I would be able to help people, and also allow me to pursue my passion of language, and communication. I have always been fascinated with how language allows us to connect with each other in such a meaningful, and profound way. Both my parents worked in the medical field, and knowing me as well as they do, encouraged me to spend time shadowing some of the SLPs at the hospital where they worked. I quickly discovered speech-language pathology was the perfect fit for me. What is your favorite thing to work on in therapy? I really enjoy working with preschool aged children, targeting social emotional development, and early language skills. I love seeing how a child’s mind works, and exploring new skills with them as they learn, and we practice together. I find working with families very rewarding, so providing parent education and counseling is another part of working with this population I really enjoy. What is your fovorite thing about being an SLP? The best thing about my job is that I get to help children be their best selves! I find it extremely rewarding to be able to work with a child and his/her family, build strong relationships with them, and help them reach their goals. There is nothing better than watching a child make positive steps towards his/her goals, and feeling so proud of them for everything they have accomplished. What is an area you'd like to learn more about? I would love to learn more about literacy, and reading therapy for children. This is a skill that many children struggle with, and one that I am only just starting to gain experience in. What do you like to do when you aren't helping kids improve their communication skills? I just recently moved to Vancouver from the prairies, and I am having so much fun exploring all that the city has to offer. New hiking trails, restaurants, festivals - I even went downhill skiing for the first time recently, and had a blast! Other activities I enjoy include learning new languages, and exercising my “creativity muscles”. I have been studying both Spanish, and ASL for the last few years back home in Winnipeg, and would really like to get back into that here in Vancouver. I enjoy expressing myself through creative outlets, so I spend my free downtime journaling, knitting, or trying new recipes from cookbooks. Welcome to the new blog! The delay in uploading a "first post" was primarily due to me trying to figure out who and what this blog was for. Is it for you, parents, deciding whether to see an SLP or looking for ideas of what to work on at home with your child? Is it for you, fellow SLPs looking for new therapy ideas and evidence-based practice? Is it for those interested in pursuing a future career as a speech pathologist? Or is it a mix of all three and maybe a few I haven't even considered? In the end, I decided it's most likely going to be the latter, because I think I can provide content for all 3 of those options. I'm going to try to make it easy to navigate by using the "categories" links located in the right-hand sidebar. There you'll be able to click on whichever category suits you best and find all the posts specifically tailored to you.  Me with my 2 daughters For this first post, I'm going to provide some more information about myself as a bit of an introduction. If you're a parent considering hiring a private speech-language pathologist, you definitely want to make sure you're hiring someone whose expertise and temperament is compatible with your child and their needs. To help in that process, I've answered a few interview questions below, so you can get a better idea of who I am and how I work.
Where did you go to school and how long have you been practicing? I graduated from the UBC School of Audiology and Speech Sciences in 2007. After that, I worked in the public sector for awhile at the Surrey Centre for Child Development. I also consulted to an amazing private SLP who used to work in the Vancouver area. I have been practicing privately on my own since 2009. What made you decide to become a speech pathologist? I studied psychology (with a minor in Spanish) in my undergrad at Boston University. At that time, my degree advisor was Jean Berko Gleason, a massive name in the field of Developmental Psychology and Language Development. When I realized that my favourite part of psychology was learning about how children developed language, Dr. Gleason advised me to look into becoming a speech pathologist. What is your favourite thing to work on in therapy? Though I do do speech sound therapy in my practice, my *favorite* things to work on are higher level language skills - anything from forming sentences all the way up to social skills and pragmatic language. I love working on narrative language, reading comprehension, and discourse. I often think this is because my undergraduate degree is in psychology instead of linguistics. What do you love most about being a speech pathologist? So many things!!! I love that I get to read books and play games as part of my job. I love that I get to find the fun in all of the goals I target. I love seeing the look on the kids' faces when they achieved a goal or gave the correct answer and they know it! I love working with families and supporting real, functional communication in the daily lives of the kids I work with. What is an area of the field that you would like to learn more about? I'm really interested in learning more about the building blocks of literacy and how it is so intertwined with oral language development. One of my professional development goals for 2020 is to learn more about literacy development. Another is to really continue to increase and hone my skills when targeting social competencies. What do you like to do when you aren't helping kids improve their communication skills? I have two daughters (pictured above), so I spend a lot of time with them. We love playing Uno and creating elaborate pretend games. I also am a writer so am always trying to carve out time to work on my manuscripts. When not writing, I love being outdoors, hiking, swimming, camping, all of the above! Stay tuned to see more posts! I'll be adding a "therapy activity of the week" documenting one activity I did each week. In addition, I'll post lots of info about books and activities I use frequently. I'll have some posts coming up about typical and atypical speech and language development, as well as some red flags for when you might want to seek an SLP. Stay tuned for all of that and more! One quick note, to anyone hoping to become a loyal follower of my blog, my posts might not be as frequent as on other blogs you may follow. My primary priority is to provide the best service I can to my clients, so therapy time, prep time, and professional development will always take precedence over blog-writing time! That said, I will update here at least weekly with my activity of the week. :) Thank you for reading and feel free to comment! |
AuthorCarla Monteleone & Deborah Carter own and operate Grow Speech and Language Therapy in Vancouver, BC Archives
May 2023
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