We provide speech-language therapy services to children from birth to 18 years of age.
Services
Every session is spent working directly with your child as well as focusing on educating and training family members and other caregivers to help ensure effective generalization of all treatment techniques used.
Specialized skill areas include:
- Phonological/articulation disorders
- Apraxia
- Hearing Loss
We are also dedicated to providing quality speech therapy in the areas of:
- Feeding/dysphagia
- Language deficits/delays
- Reading deficits
- Writing deficits
- Pragmatic deficits
- Learning disabilities
- Autism spectrum/pervasive developmental disorders
- Voice disorders
- Auditory processing disorders
- Cleft palate
- Dysarthria
Clinical services are designed to help individuals of all ages maximize their communicative functioning. Our goal is the achievement of the maximum level of performance at home, school, and in the community.
At Beyond Words, the following are provided:
- Free screenings
- Comprehensive evaluation and diagnostics
- Consultation with report of assessment results
- Treatment sessions designed to meet individual needs, either in 30 or 60 minute periods
- Home practice activities provided to enhance therapy progress
- Communication with schools for successful transfer of new skills
All consultations and treatment are scheduled by advance appointment.
"The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood."
Staff
![Picture of Ashley Bradley](img/ash-bradley.jpg)
Ashley Bradley is a creative, enthusiatic therapist who combines fun activities with evidence based approaches to create productive and dynamic therapy sessions. Ashley has worked in a variety of settings including inpatient/outpatient hospitals, early intervention, schools, and private practices. She has experience conducting comprehensive speech and language assessments and providing therapy ranging in age from infants up through the high school level, with a special interest in working with preschool children.
She has experience providing therapy to treat a range of diagnoses, but her areas of specialty training include:
- articulation/phonological disorders
- apraxia/motor speech disorders
- hearing impairment
She has additional certifications and training experiences for the above mentioned areas. She is also proficient in American Sign Language.
"Not being able to speak is not the same as having nothing to say"
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Insurance Accepted?
Yes, currently Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) Insurance is accepted. Every insurance policy has a different method for coverage approval so please speak with the clinician regarding how to obtain coverage for your evaluation and therapy. The following link is helpful to guide you through this process. What if you don't have BCBS insurance? Unfortunately even for families with medical insurance coverage, often speech/language services are not covered. In this case, often families choose to pay privately for therapy services. If your insurance company is not listed, please contact us for self-pay rates. In addition, the following links can help guide you through your options:
Making Sense of your Health Insurance Plan
Private Health Plans-Speech Therapy
Using your Health Saving Account for Speech Therapy Coverage
What Services are Offered?
- Comprehensive Speech & Language Evaluation (2 hours)
- Comprehensive Feeding Evaluation (2 hours)
- Speech Screening (15 minutes)
- Individual Speech-Language or Feeding Session (30 or 60 minute sessions)
What is Speech/Language Therapy Like?
A Speech-Language Pathologist diagnoses and provides treatment for children and adults with a variety of speech-language, communication, cognitive and feeding-swallowing issues.
A common question is, "What is the difference between language and speech?" Language disorders affect the way a person communicate their ideas (e.g., order/grammar/cohesiveness/vacabulary etc) AND/OR the way that person understands language being spoken to them (e.g., concepts/following directions/vocabulary etc). Speech disorders include the clarity, articulation, voice quality and fluency of a child's spoken words.
During the evaluation process, both a history report provided by a parent/caregiver interview and clinician directed formal and informal testing is conducted. Based on this information, the clinician will write treatment goals and develop home programs to begin theray. During therapy the clinician and parent determine the optimal approaches for the child. Clinicians provide feedback following each session. A Home Program, including suggested activities and other recommendations is provided regularly as a part of the treatment process.
Does My Child Need Speech-Language Services?
While there are developmental standards, children will develop their skills at a different pace within that range. If you are concerned as to whether your child is functioning at a level consistent with their peers, it is recommended that you seek a speech-language or feeding evaluation. The early months and years of an infant or child's life are a critical period during which the development of strong social & communication skills take place. These first years are integral for the foundation of later educational and language development. Research has shown that intervention during these early years makes the greatest change for that child's overall development.
Speech and language services address and remediate the following:
- Feeding skills
- Development of speech/articulation skills
- Receptive and expressive language
- Social pragmatics
- Development of augmentative communication systems
Many parents wonder if their child is developing speech and language skill within the average range. The following information gives some precursors to articulation, and receptive/expressive language skills.
1-2 Years
- Says more words every month
- Uses some 1-2 word questions ("What's that?")
- Puts 2 words together ("More cookie." "No juice.")
- Uses many different consonant sounds at beginning of words
- Points to things that are named (e.g., toys, pictures, body parts, etc)
- Follows simple directions
- Responds to his/her name
- Early in this stage children will jargon or bable to themselves
2-3 Years
- Has a word for almost everything
- Uses 2-3 words to talk about and ask for things
- Speech is understood by familiar listeners most of the time
- Often asks for or directs attention to objects by naming them
- Understands differences in meaning ("go-stop", "in-on")
- Follows two requests ("Get the book and put it on the table.")
3-4 Years
- Talks about activities at school and tells stories
- People outside family understand child's speech
- Uses a lot of sentences that have 4 or more words
- Usually talks easily without repeating syllables or words
- Cannot count the number of vocabulary words that he/she uses and understands
- Answers simple "who," "what," "where," and some "why" questions
4-5 Years
- Speech is "adult-like" in form and content
- Uses sentences with lots of details ("I like to read my books")
- Tells stories that stick to topic and have a cohesive theme
- Communicates easily with other children and adults
- Says the majority of sounds correctly
- Uses the appropriate grammar
Testimonials
"After having spent a couple of years with my son in speech therapy with 2 different providers, we finally found the perfect match for our son with Ashley! Ashley's love for her profession, her undeniable knowledge mixed with her high energy and creativity gave my son exactly what he needed to improve his speech. It was amazing how quickly he progressed. My son no longer dreads going to speech therapy thanks to Ashley!"
"We were very fortunate to have Ashley enter our lives shortly after we learned about our infant daughter's profound hearing loss. Ashley worked closely with our daughter and the rest of our family, using her sign language and speech therapy skills to introduce language into our daughter's life. We'll be forever grateful for the ways she helped us learn how to communicate with our child and to enable her to communicate with us. Her obvious knowledge, her absolute comfort with kids, and her warm personality made Ashley the ideal speech therapist for our family during the most critical time of our daughter's language development."
"Our son was so fortunate to have been able to work with a therapist who was able to combine fun activities with important speech goals. We appreciated Ashley's structured approach to speech and auditory training and the feedback she was able to give us from the sessions. She not only gave our son a strong foundation, but also helped us understand his speech and auditory development as it related to his hearing loss. He loved playing with her in his sessions and looked forward to them every week. As parents of a child for whom speech and auditory training is so important, we could not ask for more than that! This statement does not fully convey our adoration for the work she did, but I'm not sure anything could."
"Ashley provided speech therapy to my son. She really engaged my son in a way that made learning fun. She knew how to set boundaries that were age appropriate in order to maximize his focus. That was her magic. Ashley could somehow inspire the best side of children's potential. Her knowledge and speech and language methodology was superior. I put complete trust and faith in Ashley as a direct result of her effectiveness. My son thrived under her care, and I attribute much of his early intervention success to Ashley's guidance. My son has moderate to severe bilateral loss, and is now meeting grade level benchmarks in preschool. But, to put that aside, Ashley is someone who is just an honest, kind, bright woman who is vibrant and a pleasure to have had in our lives."
"Ashley has worked with both our children as toddlers during their early stages of speech and language development. She was great! She was always patient and kind, even when our kids were having a rough day. She took time to know and remember what our kids liked, and used that in her sessions. Her playfulness allowed her to think on the fly, so as to creativity incorporate her plan into whatever our child was interested in. Ashley also provided us with helpful aids to used at home, and was a great benefit to our family."
"Ashley provided speech and language therapy for our daughter, between age 1 and 3 years old. Ashley’s friendly interaction with our daughter, and her targeted therapy that included fun games for a young child, helped our daughter grow in the areas she needed the most at such a critical time in her speech and social development. Our daughter loved working with Ashley. Our daughter is doing great, her speech and language are above average. We feel very fortunate to have had Ashley in our daughter’s life at such an important time. Thank you Ashley for your professionalism, your caring, and your kindness."
"Our family was lucky enough to work with Ashley for over a year. When we first met Ashley, our son was almost 18 mos old with significant receptive and expressive language delays in addition to motor challenges and considerable sensory needs. Ashley established a rapport and relationship with him immediately. Ashley really understood our son- she played to his strengths and made therapy fun! She has an extremely creative approach and is always thinking 'outside the box'. When Ashley first started working with him he was not even consistently responding to his name. She developed a thematic program for him using songs and movement, because that is what he loves and how he learns best. I truly believe her approach opened the doors to his receptive language! Ashley worked closely with our family on many other foundational skills for him, such as isolating his pointer finger, gestures and signs, and picture communication. We also worked with her to resolve some feeding difficulties. As a parent, I felt like she gave me the tools I needed to reinforce the work she was doing in his therapy sessions and that she truly understood my concerns. We were working with Ashley when we received his diagnosis of Angelman Syndrome. I can not tell you how vital Ashley’s support was to our family during that difficult time. I wholeheartedly recommend Ashley to any parent without reservation. She is a fabulous therapist!"
Our child's speech was difficult for us and everyone else to understand. We started meeting several times weekly with Ashley. She got to know our child and us well. She tailored the therapy sessions to the speech deficiencies and our child's interests and their particular learning style. They had fun together while learning. Ashley was different from speech therapists that we met with in the sense that she did not only focus on single sounds and words but integrated the complexity of multiple words in sentences as our child progressed. Our child rapidly showed improvement because they were engaged in learning. Ashley even made arrangements to meet our child at their preschool and come to our house regularly for visits. Our child's teachers were thrilled with the progress as well. We would highly recommend Ashley as a speech therapist.
Contact Us
Services are currently being offered in a home-based setting in the following New Hampshire towns, and surrounding areas. If you do not see your town listed, contact us to find out about availability.
- Amherst
- Bedford
- Hollis
- Hudson
- Manchester
- Merrimack
- Milford
- Nashua
Clinic office space is currently being developed....
If you use the contact form, you should recieve a response within 24 hours. If you leave your phone number, you will recieve a phone call.
Thank you!