Objectives:

Objective 1: Define Communicative Partner Training (CPT) for Aphasia

○ What is CPT?

● Any intervention that targets those who interact with people with aphasia (PwA) (Hinkley et al., 2013)

● Overall goals of this treatment and why should you use it?

● Who can benefit from CPT?

Objective 2: Identify communication strategies for the PwA’s family members and caregivers

○ Importance of non-verbal and verbal strategies (Harmon et al., 2019)

○ Verbal strategies

○ Methods of training (Hinkley et al., 2013)

Objective 3: Discuss goal setting and teletherapy indications for PwA

● Goal setting

■ What strategies will the client and his communication partner (done in a timely manner) will benefit from and the situations and/or topics that he needs to discuss

● How to incorporate strategies during teletherapy sessions

■ Incorporating verbal and visual strategies during sessions

■ Situation where the PwA would have to communicate a message to a family

member

    
Speaker:

Stephanie Obusan, M.A., CCC-SLP is a Pediatric & Adult Speech-Language Pathologist practicing in Torrance, CA.  She works with both children and adults with communicative disorders such as: aphasia, cognitive-communicative disorders stemming from traumatic brain injuries, early intervention, and articulation disorders in the private practice setting.

She received both of her undergraduate and graduate degree from California State University-Long Beach, #GoBeach in 2019. In graduate school, Stephanie was involved in a variety of departmental activities, such as a research assistant for an aphasia research study. She also facilitated her local aphasia support group for 5 years during her undergraduate studies that led her passion for aphasia.

Stephanie is passionate in advocating for her clients and their family members and to help them use their voice through a variety of communication modalities (i.e., verbalization, gestures, through an AAC device, etc.). She believes in the importance of giving her clients a sense of ownership in their learning process and involving their families throughout the assessment, evaluation and therapy process. 

Aside from being an SLP, Stephanie recently created an Instagram page @sayitwithsteff as a resource for parents and family members of individuals with communicative disorders. She also created the Instagram page to help families in the Philippines by translating the strategies in Tagalog. Stephanie’s overall goals are to raise awareness for children and adults with communicative disorders and to empower more Filipino families.