Student Aide touched by working with BRSHF kids

As you may know, BRSHF relies on a cadre of students from local universities who, overseen by licensed professional staff, assist with and facilitate autism and speech therapy and audiology services here in the clinic. Often, these students go on to pursue post-graduate studies in Speech Pathology, Audiology, Psychology, Occupational Therapy, and Special Education. BRSHF is proud to be one of few clinics in town where these students can get hands-on experience working with children to add to their resumes. One such student, Gina, cited an experience she had working in our program in the personal statement for a grad school application, and she allowed us to share part of it with you:

"I have a unique passion for the field of Speech Pathology. This was made clear to me during my clinical practicum, as I worked with a particular 4-year-old girl. This child, having severe Apraxia, had a very limited vocabulary and repetitive phrases were common. (*Ed. note: Apraxia is a motor planning disorder, which makes it difficult to sequence how to make a sound, or to decide what to say and then say it. Once these children know how to say a word or phrase, they often repeat it because they know they can say it correctly.) One day she replaced a name in one of her regular utterances ("Where Shaun?" - a boy in her class) with my name ("Where Gina?"). The day that she first spoke my name was the day that I became absolutely certain that I wanted to be a part of this field. I look forward to being able to make a difference in people's lives by helping them to conquer their communications deficits and to grow as more social and competent human beings."

This story is an example of common, every-day progress that goes on here at BRSHF. But it is an honor to provide these pivotal learning moments, not just to the children enrolled in our programs, but also to the many student workers who dedicate countless hours to our clinic.

Summer Student Aides: The Best of the Best

Ms. Ann Nader coordinates the student workers who provide therapy for our Therapeutic Language Center's group language preschool classes, as well as those who work one-on-one in the TLC's autism program. She provided this update about the new group of aides coming on board for the summer:

"For the last few weeks, I've been working with getting the aides in place for our summer session. Around the semester transitions, we do a lot of work finding students, usually in psychology and speech language/communications to work in the Therapeutic Language Center. We seek student aides from LSU, Southern, and Southeastern, and we have a pretty comprehensive process in place before classes start up again. We're really dependent on these aides for the quality of service we provide, so they go through interviews with human resources as well as the therapy staff, reference and background checks, and are asked to observe group/individual therapy, and attend orientation training sessions. This week, we trained 30 aides to work with us for the summer, 17 of whom are new to BRSHF.


It's a lot of work to get them all trained and assigned, whether they're in groups or working individually with a child on the autism spectrum, but it's so exciting this time of year to be involved with the incoming aides! They are so energetic, eager to learn, and enthusiastic about the chance they have here to gain direct experience working with children. They really enjoy it and we just love having them around. Our clinic wouldn't be what it is without our student workers!"