The Role of Games in Overcoming the Barriers to Paediatric Speech Therapy Training

Abstract

In addition to training at the therapists’, an important part of paediatric speech therapy is home practice with parents. The purpose of this study was to investigate the barriers in home practice from the perspective of speech-language pathologists (SLP). Another goal was to gather an understanding on the role of games in speech therapy and how games could be used to overcome the above barriers. Participants were 26 SLPs in Finland who participated in an online questionnaire. Our findings indicate that successful speech therapy home practice is affected by multiple factors, such as resources, motivation and commitment, but also by multiple stakeholders. According to our results, SLPs are active users of games. The games SLPs use in their clinical work are self-made, speech therapy-targeted games (board games, digital games, functional games), commercial board games, and commercial digital games. SLPs commonly use games as platforms that they modify for different purposes. The games are used to make the speech therapy training itself playful, and playing a game is used as a reward after training. Based on our results, the supporting role of games in speech therapy is recognized by SLPs but there is still great unused potential.