16 Apr Congratulations Sarah Carmody, M.S., CCC-SLP

Congratulations to Sarah Carmody, M.S., CCC-SLP, for graduating from the Apraxia Kids Intensive Training Institute (Apraxia Boot Camp)!

Sarah Carmody is a speech-language pathologist based in southern New Jersey and affiliated with the Nemours Alfred I du Pont Hospital for Children (Deptford satellite). She loves languages, and was first fascinated by motor speech while enrolled in a course to improve her pronunciation of French. This experience led Sarah to her role as an SLP and multilingual specialist, serving in pediatric outpatient therapy settings infofurmanner.de. She also operates a small private practice and collaborates regularly with school districts. Sarah developed a specialty interest in the assessment and treatment of CAS through her experiences at Apraxia Kids National Conferences, and alongside several children and families who have invited her on their speech therapy journey. Sarah is a proud graduate of the 2018 Apraxia Kids Intensive Training Institute aka “Boot Camp!” She is committed to using this specialty knowledge to help children find their voices, support families, build professional collaboration, and spread community awareness of childhood motor speech challenges. Sarah holds her MS in speech-language pathology from Teachers College, Columbia University and a B.A. in History and French from Boston College.

Apraxia Kids: If you were to state the #1 thing you learned from this training experience, what would that be?

Sarah: I think my number one takeaway was that a strong, data-driven approach to assessment and treatment that is founded in the most current, research-based understanding of CAS (diagnosis/treatment) will lead me to make more confident and clinically sound decisions in practice. When I make decisions that are clinically sound, I am better positioned to explain them to caregivers, professionals, and key players in a child’s CAS journey.

Apraxia Kids: Tell us about any relationships that you formed through the training experience.

Sarah: The 2018 Boot Campers are a tight knit group with an active Facebook page. I have also enjoyed becoming part of the Boot Camp list serve through Yahoo Groups. More specifically, I found it extremely beneficial to connect with two fellow Philadelphia area SLPs — Sue Caspari and Trish Mayro — and I know this is going to hopefully lead to strong collaborations in the future. (It already is!) Finally, it was tremendous to meet (for the first time ever) another French-speaking SLP, Isabelle. We were able to connect in terms of our bilingual backgrounds and also our specific interests in CAS and we are really excited to collaborate with Nancy in our panel discussion at this year’s conference! Overall, I was awed by the depth of knowledge, clinical insight, and voracity for learning in that room from campers and mentors alike. I could probably list “who I would call/email” in response to specialty types of SLP questions. (And I’ve already taken advantage of those connections several times!)

Apraxia Kids: Have you served as a local resource/information source for other professionals and families since attending the intensive training?

Sarah: Yes! I have had the opportunity to present to students/professionals on multiple occasions since Boot Camp and have built a 6 hour workshop designed to overview speech motor development, definition of CAS, assessment and treatment methods. I presented versions of this talk to 1) University of Delaware graduate students as a segment of their Motor Speech Disorders course 2) Nemours AI du Pont SLPs 3) Delaware valley area SLPs during the inaugural Speech Language Pathology Conference event at Nemours/du Pont I am thrilled to be giving the Philly Area reward talk in a few weeks at Salus U to talk about CAS and comorbidities for parents, professionals, community members My next agenda item is to try to set up time to speak locally at a “Director’s Meeting,” a forum where Child Study Team directors in my area meet every month or so to discuss service issues.

Apraxia Kids: What would you say to someone considering applying to boot camp next year?

Sarah: I would tell them that, no matter how much you think you may know, this is likely to be the first step on a very intense but incredibly worthwhile learning journey. Not only did I expand my knowledge tremendously at the training, but it has brought me to an entirely different level of understanding, seeking, and exploring information as part of the clinical dialogue related to motor speech. Do it!