Menu of Services Offered to Familes by FIRST WORDS Project

First Words has a menu of service options for supporting communication development in children who may need extra help to reach their potential. The following services are offered:

• Parent Education Workshops offered at the Leroy Collins Leon County Public Library to provide information about communication with specific ideas about how to support children's development. A speech-language pathologist will talk about how children learn to use words, how to respond to children in ways that encourage them to say more, and how to get conversations going during daily routines. There is time for discussion and questions concerning the ways children under the age of 24 months learn to talk. We offer the workshops weekly in sets of 2 to 3 topics that are repeated monthly.
  
  
• Infant-Toddler Play Groups are organized for families to receive information about communication development. They give caregivers the opportunity to talk to a speech-language pathologist about their child's development in a relaxed, informal, child-friendly setting. Groups are organized by topic with space for 5 to 8 families per session. Sessions last approximately one hour with time for discussion, coaching, and play. We offer the play groups weekly in sets of 4 topics that are repeated monthly. Groups are held at the First Words Play Room at Florida State University. Space is limited, so registration is required.
  
  
• Individualized, Family-Guided Intervention Programs are offered for families who have children with communication delays to work one-on-one with a speech-language pathologist. Individualized intervention is offered to families whose children have been evaluated by First Words and both our staff and families have specific concerns about the child's development. Intervention sessions are usually scheduled for one hour one or more times weekly and may be held at the First Words Play Room at Florida State University and/or in the family's home. The individual sessions with families focus on how their child communicates, how to respond in ways to promote their child's communication development, how to address communication development in everyday activities in the home, and how to deal with special issues such as behavior problems related to limited communication or oral/motor issues.
  
  
• Referral for Services in the Community are made for children who need more specialized evaluation or may qualify for services that are offered in the community. Because our funds are limited, we want to make sure to connect families with programs that are now funded and available in the community, and we want to be able to serve families who would not be eligible for available programs.
  
  
• Monitoring Communication and Language Development with our evaluation tools is offered to families who are concerned about their child's development and want to find out how their child is progressing. We can send another Caregiver Questionnaire and/or schedule a re-evaluation with a clinician and share our evaluation findings with the family. For children under 24 months of age, we usually monitor children's development in 3-month intervals to detect growth. A child's growth rate is the best predictor of prognosis.

The FIRST WORDS® Project has received support for research from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs and Institute of Education Sciences; the National Institutes of Health, Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, Jacksonville, Florida; the Phillips Endowment; Todd and Annie Trimmer; and Delta Airlines.