Analysing Parental Involvement in the Delivery of Speech Interventions for Children with Speech Sound Disorders

Background: Speech and language therapists (SLTs) frequently involve parents in intervention activities for children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) (Sugden et al., 2018a). However, little is known about: a) how parents are involved in speech intervention sessions, b) whether parents’ use of supportive strategies is the same as SLTs and c) parents’ experiences of being involved in the interventions. This study aims to: compare how SLTs and parents use strategies to support children with SSDs; and to analyse what parents talk about during their speech sound interventions.
Method: The study uses a mixed-methods design to examine speech intervention activities for 13 children (aged 3:0-6;11 yrs) with SSDs and their parents. Eighty-two intervention sessions were recorded, producing 51 hours of data. Analyses of the recordings using quantitative and conversation analysis (CA) approaches examined parents’ and SLTs’ use of supportive interactional strategies. A thematic analysis (TA) using Framework Method (Ritchie & Spencer, 1994) examined what the mothers said during the interventions.
Results: The quantitative analysis showed that SLTs and parents differed in the way intervention strategies were used to elicit, evaluate, and repair speech targets. The SLT used the more explicit strategies. There was no evidence that parent strategy use changed during the intervention. Using CA, further differences were seen in the interactions particularly in how explicitly the SLT introduced the intervention activities. In the TA parents talked about how they carried out the activities and the challenges they encountered.
Discussion and Clinical Implications: The difficulties parents encounter making judgements about speech accuracy and also using explicit speech strategies are discussed. How parents are trained to carry out homework tasks is considered, particularly that parents struggle with some aspects even after demonstration of activities.