Private vs. Public Speech Therapy

There is a vast chasm of difference between the quality of private and public services. For example:

If your child is struggling in school, will you get better results by hiring a private 1:1 tutor 3x/ week, or sending your child to the school group study hall once a week?

This concept is seen in abundance in special education services. Here is my experience with private versus public speech services.

Public School Speech Therapy
1. Offers the bare minimum level of services to kids

2. Not enough SLPs for number of kids

3. SLP cannot specialize, because they have to meet all the different needs of all the different kids

4. It is free! Thank you tax dollars at work!

5. You can advocate and get more services IF you know how

6. Communication with parent is very limited unless you got a rockstar SLP

7. Speech therapy goals must pertain to education. You can't pick whatever you want. Generally, this is pretty easy to work around.

Private Speech Therapy
1. SLPs specialize in different areas, so you can find an SLP who understands exactly how to work with your child and how to handle that specific disability

2. Specialty comes at a cost. The more specialized the SLP is, the more they charge

3. Insurance will typically cover 20 visits a year max, after you meet your deductible. So expect to shell out a LOT of money if your kid needs long-term speech therapy 3-5x/ week

4. The SLP works directly with the child. Parent is encouraged to participate and carryover at home

5. Private SLPs really work hard for progress and want your child to progress as much as possible as quickly as possible 

6. Generally, SLPs have openings in their schedules for more clients. They aren't majorly overbooked like the school SLPs.

7. You get to pick any goal you want your child to work on

Results
There are pros and cons to each side. Obviously, you will get more results and faster with a highly specialized SLP. When Chelsea went to Nancy Kaufman's boot camp, she made more progress in a week than she had in nearly a year of school speech. But we were also charged more than $100/ hour.

This year, we pulled Chelsea completely from private speech (for a number of reasons), and we saw more regression than at any other point in her life. 

Personally, I like private services whenever we can afford it. The problem is, it gets very expensive very quickly.