A new study has explored the effectiveness of a parent-implemented program that works to stimulate the speech of children younger than 3 years old who have cleft lip and palate (CLP). The intervention resulted in speech gains for the children with clefts. The study is published in the Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Journal (of the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association). CLPs are the most frequent birth defects in the United States, affecting nearly 7,000 children yearly, or one in every 600 children born. The main questions from the study concerned whether parents could be trained to deliver an early intervention program for children with cleft palate and to what degree the program was effective. The participants were 10 mother-child pairs in which the child had CLP and 10 mother-child pairs in which the children did not have CLP. The children ranged in age from 14 to 36 months. The results of this study showed that the mothers could be trained to deliver the intervention reliably. Increased sound inventories, increased speech accuracy, and reduced use of glottal stops were found in the children with clefts. The speech gains did not exceed those made by the children without clefts. Still, the results of the study have implications for service delivery models in which the services of speech-language pathologists are limited.
(Source: Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Journal. 2008; 45(1):18-31)
