Giving Children the Power to Speak

Julie DeAngelis helps children to speak clearly. Even those who still want to wear COVID-19 masks to hide their language delays.

Remote learning and the social isolation wrought by the pandemic left many students behind. This is acutely true of children’s language and speech development. How can you expect a toddler to mimic language if they’re surrounded by masked faces?

RiteCare Childhood Language Center of Santa Barbara, founded in 1984, is the only nonprofit in Santa Barbara County offering free language and speech therapy for children. 

DeAngelis, director of RiteCare Childhood Language Center of Santa Barbara, says that local pediatricians, psychologists, librarians, and schools are aware of their services, but the need is greater than their small staff can support.

“We have developed all these amazing programs based on the needs in our community,” DeAngelis says. “The school system has strict parameters on who can qualify. So many children might still need therapy, but they are not qualifying based on the parameters.” 

This is where the center fills that gap, specifically with a focus on the preschool years, with other programs for older children.

Housed in the historic Masonic Temple in Santa Barbara, RiteCare Childhood Language Center of Santa Barbara typically treats over 100 patients a year with extensive private speech and language therapy supported by three programs to augment those efforts: Camp Chit Chat, a socially interactive camp for preschool-age children with mild to moderate speech and language delays; Brain Lab, an after-school literacy program for students from first grade through sixth grade; and Super Brains, a small group of kindergarten through first-grade children that works on social skills. 

The nonprofit measures success by clear speech. This essential ability is a struggle for many young children who initially arrive at the center having to repeat themselves to be understood, or turn to others to interpret for them. Sometimes, DeAngelis says, parents bring a child to the center who isn’t talking at all. 

The best stories end on graduation day, she says, when that same student won’t stop talking.