If there’s anything people love in St. Pete, it’s a personal touch from a local. One Sunshine City health professional is providing just that, giving local families a personal experience for their kids instead of being hustled in and out of a hospital.
Sunshine Speech Services, launched last year by Ally Junot, M.A., CCC-SLP, is a pediatric speech therapy practice based in St. Pete that provides naturalistic and specialized treatments to children and their families in several settings. Patients are able to choose between telehealth, school-based, or naturalistic environments to receive individualized and comprehensive speech and language treatments.
What sets Junot apart – other than the hundreds-of-people-long waitlists and many hospitals – is the personalized care she gives. Not only does she spend more time with kids than most speech therapists, she actually makes house visits to make sure the experience is as easy and natural as possible.
From playing in the backyard and learning syllable pronunciation, to taking a kid to a restaurant so they can practice ordering from a menu, the care Junot provides through Sunshine Speech Services is above and beyond anything else in the area. For parents who are stuck on waiting lists now, or for those who have just wondered if perhaps their kiddo may benefit from time with a speech therapist, Junot offers a next-day home visit and evaluation to discuss treatments and options.
“I came from a hospital setting where it felt very commercialized,” Junot said. “It wasn’t a personal experience at all. My families would come and get 30 minutes with me and that was all they got. I felt like I wasn’t able to give the optimal care that I wanted to give kids.”
“Once I started Sunshine Speech Services, the differences that I’ve seen in kids’ progress are huge,” she continued. “And the fact that I can be at a home, with their family, and in their environment, creates a whole different aspect of giving personal and individualized care that they might not receive somewhere else.”
Receive care for a wide variety of speech-related needs
Sunshine Speech Services provides care for a wide range of needs and ages, and Junot said there are four main reasons for patients to come in, each as important as the last.
One of the biggest factors, Junot says, is early intervention. Catching speech issues early and beginning treatment soon can be highly beneficial. Junot says that if parents are concerned their children haven’t begun speaking as quickly as others their age, or if they aren’t using as many words as their peers, a consultation can help find solutions and potentially begin a path to treatment.
From there, the next step, and another big reason for seeking speech therapy, is articulation. Many children simply have trouble sounding out syllables or creating certain sounds with their mouths. Even just through a series of sessions of play time in the backyard, Junot can help kids gain the knowledge and confidence to speak loud and clear.
One of the biggest and most common areas of need for treatment, of course, is stuttering or speech anxiety. Whether kids are having trouble talking to their peers, talking to adults, or just fighting against a stutter at various times, speech therapy can help give them the ability and confidence to move past it.
And finally, as kids work through the developmental stages, Sunshine Speech Services is primed to help children struggling with reading or dyslexia struggles. While those are frustrating to deal with on their own, there are ways kids can overcome those issues, working with Junot and her naturalistic, personalized approach.
Sunshine Speech Services offers individualized care
Again, it’s that personal touch that means so much and sets Sunshine Speech Services apart. It’s why Junot left the hospital and started her own practice in the first place: to give kids and their families the individual care and attention they deserve, in a setting that keeps them at ease and encourages real, actionable growth.
“I usually take something that the kid likes to do – reading a book, playing a game, being outside – and incorporate those things into lessons,” Junot said. “I also want to take kids to parks or restaurants – somewhere that you can really practice. I take them to parks to interact with other kids, or take them to a restaurant and teach them how to order.”
When Junot first meets with any family, she begins by asking the parents what they want to get out of the treatment. Where would they like to see their kid in 3-6 months? While Junot will always perform her own assessment, she believes it is not only helpful, but imperative for parents to be involved in the process.
She also wants parents and kids alike to know that help is out there, and readily available. Kids don’t have to be rushed through hospitals or big clinics, nor do they have to sit for who knows how long on a waiting list hoping that one day someone will make time for them. With Sunshine Speech Services, Junot says, that personalized (and immediate care) is one call away.
“There’s an option out there,” she says. “It’s as easy as giving me a call and I can show up at their house for an evaluation the next day. It’s a really easy process that we can move through together.”
Junot has been working with early childhood and school-age children for more than three years in a variety of different settings including hospital rehabilitation, private, and public schools. She also holds a Certificate of Clinical Competence as a Speech-Language Pathologist with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and state licensure with Florida. Additionally, Junot is certified in the LAMP- Words for Life AAC program, Mealtime Miseries feeding therapist trained, and trained in several of the Hanen speech programs. Learn more at flsunshinespeechservices.com.
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