Having a speech therapy private practice gives you much more freedom surrounding goals and treatment decisions
This post is part of a series about how I've built a small pediatric speech therapy private practice in Brooklyn, NY. I am the sole proprietor and SLP of a professional service limited liability company (PLLC). I started it in 2020 -- without taking any expensive courses -- and it is going strong! I hope to share some of the things I've learned with other SLPs who may be curious about starting their own private practice.
I'm just going to say it: I dislike IEP goals. With a passion. I don't like writing them, and I (usually) don't like following them. 🫣
Shocked? Allow me to explain.
I know, I know: IEP goals are necessary. In schools, there needs to be clear laws and guidelines around how children qualify for and receive special education services. IEPs clearly outline the services a child needs in order to be successful in school and they outline steps needed in order to help make this happen. I've written a lot of IEP goals and attended a lot of IEP meetings. I get it.
But the truth is that school-based SLPs often have to work off goals that another SLP has generated. This means that sometimes IEP goals are written by someone who knows the student and their needs well, and sometimes IEP goals are written by an SLP who has spent just a couple of hours (or less - eek) evaluating the child.
Either way, we may inherit IEP goals that aren't great, either because the SLP who wrote the goals does therapy differently than we do, or because the SLP evaluating the child didn't identify the most pressing needs. And while there is a way to get IEP goals formally changed before an annual review, it can be a pain.
I also find IEP goals to be annoyingly specific at times. Because they have to be S.M.A.R.T (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), they can result in too narrow of a focus. Also, we all know articulation therapy rarely follows a predictable timeline, which makes the whole "time-bound" element kind of messy.
In private practice, we are free from IEP goals! While it's still helpful to have goals, it's much easier to change them according to evolving needs and priorities. (And if kids are anything, they are evolving!) It has been so liberating to be doing exactly what I think a child needs at that point in time, whether it's focusing on a unit or skill they are currently working on in school, or pivoting to different target sounds because a child has developed some new speech sounds spontaneously.
As long as it makes sense clinically, and to the families I'm working with, we're good to go!
(If you are still working with IEP goals, check out the solution I finally developed, after many years, here.)
LEVEL UP YOUR SPEECH THERAPY ACTIVITIES WITH STORYWHYS
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Have you heard? StoryWhys now offers the Speech and Spell series of resources. I am always trying to tie articulation work and spelling together in my therapy and I've never found any good resources out there to help me do this. So I made my own! Many more speech sounds and spelling rules to come. They'll be 50% off for 48 hrs when new resources are added to the StoryWhys store. Find them here.
Did you know book companions can be among the best speech therapy materials for elementary students? Explore all of the StoryWhys book companions for speech therapy in my store. You'll find comprehensive book companions that target many different language skills or Spotlight Series book companions that focus on one type of skill, all using high-quality, beloved storybooks.
And get your FREE, 71-page book companion for speech therapy on the Free Download page.
Enjoy!
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