Speech Pathologist Denise Dougherty is presently on Anguilla working with the Arijah Children’s Foundation. The Indiana, Pennsylvania, Special Needs Expert visited the island last week on the invitation of head of the Foundation, Renuka Harrigan.

Denise Dougherty with Renuka and daughter

In an exclusive interview with The Anguillian, Mrs. Dougherty explained that her specialty was Swallowing Therapy. She disclosed that she works with children and adults who have problems with chewing or “the inability to handle anything you put in their mouth [to strengthen] oral motor weaknesses as well as trigger the swallow.” Speech Pathologists also work with individuals who have problems with pronunciation and memory, as well as problems with victims of strokes.

Dougherty stated that she was in Anguilla working with children in the Foundation to try to improve their abilities. “I am here…to work with these individuals to see what we can do as far as improving their muscle skills so we can move them into better eating,” she said.

A swallow is a muscle contraction that could be induced by external means. Dougherty pointed out that a number of therapeutic techniques were used including electrical stimulation. One stimulation technique, called Vital Stim, involves electrodes placed on the neck and face to give the weak muscles a stronger contraction and help trigger the swallow. This, she stated, helps to strengthen muscles in cases that mainly involve kids who find it difficult to swallow due to birth injuries or syndromes. “Vital Stim…tends to wake up the muscles,” she said, “because a lot of the kids just don’t realize what the muscle should feel like when it moves, or if they make one movement they forget or are not quite sure how they did it.” Dougherty uses electrical stimulation in conjunction with oral motor exercises and other therapy equipment.

The Speech Pathologist admitted that every case was different and the length of time or level of progress varies between individuals. “Certainly the more severe cases…may take time, and it may take years which is sometimes very discouraging; but until the muscles are to the point where we can move on to the next level we need to lay that foundation,” she said.

Dougherty, who was contacted through a fellow Speech Pathologist who winters in Anguilla, remarked that she was happy to work with the children here. She said it took a few months to get the program running but, from what she has seen, there would be a need for continuing services. She hoped that she could work with the Arijah Children’s Foundation over a course of time “to get these kids moving a little bit further.” In this regard, the Special Needs Specialist traveled with therapy equipment for parents to continue the treatments when she leaves. She noted that families would have to be taught the exercises because repetition is important to develop ‘muscle memory.’

The Special Needs professional hoped that she could return to Anguilla periodically to continue her work with the children and their families. She opined that swallowing and oral motor weaknesses could take considerable time to fix. “It’s not a one shot deal and we basically have to lay the foundation: get the muscles moving and then we could work on improving chewing,” she explained. “The individual would start with soft textures then progress to harder materials with more consistency.” She described the ‘harder materials’ as “diets that would normally be eaten.”

Mrs. Dougherty understood that it was difficult for some parents to decide what to do with their special needs children and she hoped that as more and more people hear of her services they could recognize that there were options available to them.

Dougherty has been a Speech Pathologist since 1976 and practices in Pennsylvania with a license that allows her to practice in New York and New Jersey. In addition to clients from those areas, she sees persons from Canada, and as far away as Israel. She said she always liked working with kids and her neighbor, who went to college for Speech Pathology, introduced her to the profession. She divulged that when she first started college, her instructor for the introduction course got her ‘hooked.’

Mrs. Dougherty said there were many things that could be done for children and adults with swallowing problems and it was just a matter of identifying the particular issue and determining where to get the help.

Dougherty and Arijah in therapy

The Arijah Children’s Foundation started in August 2006. Its first program, called Inspired Child, was a Learning and Development Program that started last March with three children. Mrs. Harrigan remarked that it was “very much an Early Childhood Education skills” program with a special education teacher, a teaching assistant and community volunteers. She said the Inspired Child program would continue, catering to preschool aged children who could not function in a regular school setting for various reasons.

“Developmentally, they are behind the level of the other children so they wouldn’t have support staff in a regular classroom,” Harrigan explained. She noted that the Foundation’s services were limited to only a few students due to a shortage of qualified staff.

Mrs. Harrigan expressed her excitement that the Speech Pathologist was able to visit her Foundation. She said: “We are very fortunate that we have a number of professionals that spend most of the winter in Anguilla and they have training is Speech Pathology, Special Education and Occupational Therapy, and these are all very basic services that are provided for persons with special needs. They (the professionals) were able to help us to begin to understand what services we needed…and who could provide these services. One of the first needs that was identified was in speech, language, swallowing and feeding. This is how we were brought to Denise: through one of the ladies that initially helped us to identify what we could do to help these children.”

Harrigan praised the involvement of the Education Department that had supported the Foundation continuously. She commented that having teachers additionally trained in Special Needs was a challenge. Presently, the Foundation is working with the Education Department to encourage persons to take additional training. “I would be thrilled to speak to some of our contacts either in the US or in Canada to see if we could have somebody come down and maybe do some training, but to find someone who…is interested in taking this training is proving to be a challenge,” she said.

The Arijah Children’s Foundation is named after Arijah Harrigan who will be five years in August.

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