The goal of the SLP is maximizing a child's ability to participate in and benefit from curriculum, by promoting the development of communication and language skills.  In addition, the SLP increases the school and community's understanding of the nature and needs of the language/learning disabled and communicatively disordered populations. 

Children are typically referred for SLP services if they exhibit difficulties in the following areas:

Language Disorders:  Include difficulty following oral directions, language comprehension difficulties, disorganized, non-specific or disfluent expressive language, poor written language, or poor social language skills.

Articulation:  These children are unable to correctly pronounce one or more speech sounds.  The acquisition of speech sounds is a developmental process and some errors are typical at certain ages; however, when errors continue to be present past a particular age, these sounds should be targeted.

Neurologically-based of Structural Communication Disorders:  These include, but are not limited to, communication or language difficulties that stem from such causes as head injuries, cleft palate, cerebral palsy, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Alcohol Related Neurological Disorders.

Fluency (or Stuttering):  These individuals have mild to severe difficulty with oral communication due to fluency problems.

Alternative and Augmentative Communication:  Students who are non-verbal or have very poor speech understandability may benefit from the use of objects, photographs, pictures or speech generating devices to communicate with others.  The SLP is involved in designing and developing materials and communication objectives for this population of students.