Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder that affects how clear and understandable a person’s speech is. Between 50-90% of people with CP have dysarthria.
Adults with Cerebral Palsy have unique care needs related to physiological changes that occurred with growth and development with Cerebral Palsy, including mental health, yet experience many barriers to proper care.
We got the diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy when Lelia was 18 months. I was really happy, as we didn’t know what was wrong with her before then. She had low tone. She couldn’t roll over. She couldn’t sit up. Of course she didn’t walk. The diagnosis gave it a name, something I could work with, and I became a kind of vigilante mother, determined to get the best care for my daughter.
I'm going to be talking about AAC and reading and some different things that you might not think about when you are doing those types of activities. When you're supporting reading for a nonverbal child, whether they use a high-tech system or a light-tech system, like a paperboard, you want to make sure that they have plenty of the opportunities to contribute to the experience. You want to be able to comment. You want to be able to talk about the people, the places, the things, and maybe the feelings that they have.
Everybody tells stories, and that includes people who use communication systems. To ensure success and the ability to participate we need to make it as easy as possible. So that we can tell stories whenever we want, wherever we want, to whomever we want, and in a really easy way, so we can be successful.