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| PROMPT: One piece in the puzzle |
What is PROMPT?
PROMPT is an acronym for Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets. This is a dynamic, hands-on approach in which the trained clinician shapes a child's jaw, tongue, and lips through facial manipulation in support of sound production. Some children that may benefit from PROMPT include those diagnosed with: apraxia, cerebral palsy, and autism. In order to determine if PROMPT is appropriate for your child, your clinician will begin with an observation and evaluation.
How long will my child need PROMPT services?
Typically, children are scheduled for weekly services for up to an hour. Younger children may benefit from two, 30 minute sessions, while older clients may attend once a week for 45-60 minutes. Depending on the degree of the speech delay, services may range anywhere from 3 months for mild impairments to 3 years if delays are severe to profound. Other contributing factors that can impact longevity of services are cognitive, social/pragmatic, sensory/tactile defensiveness, and comprehension delays.
What does a PROMPT treatment session entail?
If a child has limited verbal skills or is nonverbal, then sessions will initially focus on attending to tasks while working on using vowel sounds to make needs known. Attention, focus, and eye contact are all necessary foundation skills for speech communication, so these targets will be addressed according to the child's needs. As attention improves, then PROMPT support increases for productions of consonant sounds/words/phrases/sentences.
As with any articulation or phonological approach, we start at the level the child can accurately produce, which may be a sound syllable like "ma" and progress in gradual steps to words. It is not realistic to assume that once a child can produce a single word, that he/she will leap to using that word in a sentence. Rather, we would progress to phrases and then simple sentences following word level achievements.
Should I see one private speech pathologist for PROMPT and another for traditional speech therapy?
PROMPT trained speech pathologists use this specialized approach along with many other strategies and cues, so it is not necessary to have more than one private speech pathologist on your treatment team. As stated earlier, some children may not be suitable for PROMPT, while others could require time before they feel comfortable with a tactile approach. In my experience, children typically benefit from a multi-modality approach to therapy that includes verbal, visual, and tactile cues. As such, I would not choose just a tactile approach like PROMPT in my treatment plan and solely focus on that one support. Having said that, if you want to continue speech services with another private clinician with whom your child has established rapport, then collaboration between all professionals is considered best practice.
Given the intensity of the PROMPT training, any speech pathologist interested in learning how to administer PROMPT would need to register for course work to both learn and demonstrate competence in PROMPT. My level of training does not permit me to instruct another speech pathologist in PROMPT. Therefore, as a PROMPT trained practitioner, I cannot model the supports for another speech pathologist to incorporate into his/her treatment sessions.
How do I locate a PROMPT trained speech pathologist?
If you want to find a speech pathologist in your area trained in PROMPT, then you can visit this link and conduct a search.
Will my speech pathologist train me in PROMPT for home practice with my child?
No, in fact the only professionals allowed to register for PROMPT intensive training are speech pathologists given the extensive foundation knowledge of anatomy and physiology of speech these individuals have completed at the graduate level. The intent of PROMPT is to help develop a new motor plan for speech while eliminating error movement patterns. Consistent attendance helps support that development and over time results in accurate motor movements for speech.