Providing Struggling Children the Building Blocks for a Lifetime of Communication and Confidence

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of communication skills for success in life. It’s something most of us take for granted, but for toddlers with speech and language delays, struggling with being able to express themselves can lead to frustration and behavior and social difficulties that only exacerbate as they get older.

The RiteCare Childhood Language Center of Santa Barbara was founded in 1984 to provide life-changing speech therapy, language skills, and literacy services at no cost to the families. Over the years, RiteCare has helped thousands of youngsters by providing weekly individual therapy services, a vital element for reaching communication goals. The center also provides parents with all the tools and essentials necessary for working with their child to practice the skills learned in therapy each week, with the therapist demonstrating specific strategies that are crucial to each child’s progress.
RiteCare’s speech therapy and language skills approach is much more comprehensive and focused on both the child’s and family’s specific needs than what can be provided by public schools, if at all available. RiteCare is also able to work with children at a time when services are most effective to resolve articulation and motor speech disorders, issues with stuttering, and voice and cognitive-communicative disorder.

“Early intervention makes a huge difference,” says Julie DeAngelis, Speech-Language Pathologist and RiteCare director. “We’re helping these kids get to where they need to be before they even enter kindergarten so that they’re ready to go when they start school.”
RiteCare is able to support kids who may not be able to utter a simple phrase, tell mom or dad that they’re hungry, or even pronounce their own name. With up to two years of therapy, the children are able to make astonishing progress.

“There’s nothing like seeing a child who is completely withdrawn because they can barely talk turn into an excited chatterbox,” DeAngelis says.
The RiteCare Childhood Language Center of Santa Barbara is a program of the California Scottish Rite Foundation and just one of 19 such Childhood Language Centers across the state. But the local center stands alone as the only one to offer Camp Chit Chat, an interactive summer camp for children ages 3 1/2 to 6 that offers a fun and socially interactive way for children to maintain essential communication skills during the summer when regular therapy services may not be available. The camp has a different theme each week, full of imaginative and playful activities to help kids with vocabulary words, expressions, and language skills.

“Parents tell me their child asks about it every single day,” DeAngelis says. “They jump out of bed all excited to go when it’s actually Chit Chat day.”
DeAngelis founded the camp in 2009, just two years after she joined RiteCare. Also, with her colleague Summer Calvert, DeAngelis created Brain Lab, a literacy intervention program for children in grades 2-6 that recently incorporated the Science of Reading approach to aid students with dyslexia. Operating as a private nonprofit allows the Center to be creative and think outside the box to come up with ideas that make learning more fun and effective.

“Having the child want to come and see us is the biggest hurdle,” DeAngelis says. “When they’re excited and can’t wait to run in the doors, it’s easy for us to get the work done. We’ve created something that’s engaging and the kids love to attend. When they see their progress, they can’t wait to continue.”