Parental Compliance with Recommendations to Utilize Augmentative Communication with their Children with down Syndrome

Abstract

In 1981 an alternative service delivery model was developed to assess children with communication impairments. This service has come to be known as “Communication Assessment Camps”. One important aspect of the camps has been to utilize extensive assessments of children, identify treatment priorities, and consult with families about priority recommendations and treatment procedures which could be utilized at home or in school. To assist with the consultative model approach, written reports are generated and sent to all families who participated. This study evaluated, via a telephone interview, whether or not the families of twenty-three children with Down Syndrome followed the recommendation to utilize signing to augment the development of their child's verbal expression. The results indicated that 48% of the families did not follow this recommendation. The reasons why families chose to or chose not to use signing were also explored. Overall the results indicated that there were many issues of concern for parents about augmentative communication that needed to be addressed. These included: the difference between alternative and augmentative communication, awareness that signing should co-occur with speech, confusion about an individual's suitability for use of signing and concern about the time and effort involved in learning an augmentative system that parents fear may prevent the development of speech. Parents who followed the recommendation to begin augmentative communication training reported that their individual experience with signing was a key issue in assisting them to realize the benefit of using signing. These parents generated a list of suggestions for how this experience may be conveyed by speech-language pathologists when recommending augmentative communication to a family. The implications of these findings for clinical practice are discussed.