Setting Goals For Speech Therapy
Written by: Megan Smith / Treatment / April 07, 2021 / 8 minutes read
Setting good goals is arguably one of the most important parts of speech therapy. The goals that are established in your assessment or shortly thereafter will determine every single other part of the process. They will be the main criteria to assess your progress as you continue to work with your speech-language pathologist, they will determine the types of activities and home practice used to target your skills, and they will also be used to determine when you should be discharged from your speech-language pathologist’s caseload.
In recent decades, as we have been changing the definitions of what it means to use “evidence-based practice”. We have changed its definition to include input from the client (you can learn more at ASHA). As a result, your speech-language pathologist is unlikely to be able to “assign” you goals based on your assessments. More realistically, the goal-setting process will look like this:
1. The speech-language pathologist will ask, before beginning your assessment, what you are interested in learning about yourself and your communication skills. They will listen to your concerns about your communication and begin compiling information about your life (such as the types of social and professional communication required in your life).
2. The speech-language pathologist will guide you through the assessment process, which may be formal (consisting of standardized assessments that compare you to the general population on a very specific set of tasks) or informal (much more targeted to your lifestyle, but based on general criteria for success and not comparing to normative data). These assessments will reveal areas of strength and weakness in your communication.
3. The speech-language pathologist will talk through the assessment results with you, potentially suggest some targets for therapy, and then ask for your feedback.
Many clients are made nervous by the process of providing feedback on goals offered by a healthcare professional. This makes sense! Typically, they have sought out the services of a professional specifically because they were not sure how to solve a problem that existed in their life. However, their input is key. While a clinician may be able to identify areas of deficit, they cannot determine which will have the greatest impact on a client’s life. Only the client, who understands their daily life and their own feelings about different skills, can make that judgment.
4. Targets are made SMART. The clinician and client will work together to decide how to measure success in their goals. Some commonly used metrics include counting the ratio of successes to failures (e.g. when working on a lisp, pronouncing the /s/ correctly 95% of the time in a conversation), counting the duration of a specific concern (e.g. stuttering changes from 5s in duration to less than 1s in duration), or fidelity to a strategy (e.g. providing negative feedback to a report using a specific template).
So, how can you prepare to set goals effectively for your own speech therapy process? Consider the following questions:
Why did you decide to start speech therapy? Was there a triggering event? If so, what about this event made you consider seeking help with your communication?
If you had to prioritize your concerns in order of importance for your communication, which skills would be at the top?
If your goal is “I want to feel better about ____” can you articulate why you feel poorly about that skill right now? Can you predict what might help you feel more confident?
Once you have decided what skills are important to you, how will you know if those skills are improving?
And finally: How will you know if you are ready to be done speech therapy?
As you receive information about your performance on your assessment(s) from your speech-language pathologist, compare this information to your notes. The more prepared you are for this conversation, the quicker the goal-setting process will be.
At WELL SAID we offer online courses, which come with pre-established SMART goals and specific, targeted exercises to help you meet them. Whether you struggle with leadership, assertiveness or social skills, you may find something useful: Access them here.
If you live in Ontario and are interested in working on a specific communication goal with our therapists, you can book an appointment by calling the clinic (697-795-5277) or by visiting the link below.
