Birthdays All-Around!

This week, as we're gearing up for BRSHF's 50th Anniversary celebration, we had a staff birthday of our own to celebrate! Trenae' Webb, Speech Pathologist Extraordinaire, gives this update:

"At BRSHF we celebrate the little things, we celebrate the big things, we celebrate our clients, we celebrate us! If you see one of our language clients spontaneously requesting "water" as they pass the water fountain or pausing from taking a step as they are cued to "wait!" with a shout by a therapist, our faces light up with excitement. When we're blessed with new therapy supplies or funding for necessary equipment around the clinic, happy energy shared between us all yields the ambiance of pay day!

This week, the fun continued as we took a pause out to celebrate our boss, Mrs. Melissa Juneau's 50th birthday! Decorated by our wonderful office administrators, Mrs. Bonita and Mrs. Jenna, streamers, birthday banners, and balloons nicely adorned her door and office and were awaiting her entrance to her surprise. It didn’t stop there! The staff gathered around the intercom to serenade her in singing happy birthday as she cut into her birthday cake!

It’s wonderful to have a great boss! And it’s not quite above suspicious that as she celebrates her 50th year of life, the Foundation shares in its 50th celebration of operation! What can I say? Some things just “fit” so well! Happy Birthday Mrs. Melissa!"  

Slimy snails solidify speech

Trenae Webb, one of BRSHF's speech therapists, submitted this blogpost after an exchange with nature this morning:


" 'Look! I got a slimy, sticky snail! You wanna see? Are you scared?' is what I heard echoing through the halls of the clinic this morning, prepping for my 9 o'clock client. Praying that the cute little ones from Ms. Tanya's mornining language group would not navigate to my office with their new "slick" friend, I cheered them on in their precision in articulation show and tell, mastering their "S" sounds with little to no cues from their therapist. Nothing's off limits when it comes to reaching those speech and language targets at our clinic. Nothing! Not even nature's best creatures. I bet Mr. Snail had no idea he would be the hot topic as he traveled to speech therapy this morning. I noticed he was rather non-verbal. He had no complaints! If you haven't become suspicious of it already, it's a fact...we love what we do!"

Trenae's client goes from jargon to full sentence

Trenae Webb, one of our speech therapists, has this update from parent conferences a few weeks ago:


"It was that time of the year for parent conference... a time to report all the progress that my client has made over the course of our quaterly sessions.  A precious little two year old in my group began with me not yet producing multiword combinations like her typically developing peers and primarily producing jargon-like speech, her own "personal" language.   Well, we've been working diligently on the production of true words through imitation and really manipulating the enviroment for spontaneous productions as well.  She had been progressing well, imitating 2-3 word phrases. A few days prior to the conference, she began imitating 3-4 word utterances.  It was during the parent conference that my little client burst into speech with her own, spontenous request for a ball:  "I want the ball!"   Mom was practically in tears, overwhelmed and exclaimed:  "Wow, I'm amazed!  She's talking sentences!"  Shortly after our confererence, Mom had a great report of how her little girl is suddenly a social butterfly and her use of words is increasing daily.  Ha! What a moment!  Simply priceless and a reminder of why I do what I do!"