Member comment: My husband and I cannot express the level of our gratitude to Deandra for her continuing work with our son. From her thorough initial evaluation several years ago to her thoughtfully –planned weekly sessions with our son, she consistently proves herself to be an expert in his speech and language disorders as well as his communication and social skills challenges. Deandra has helped our son to overcome early sensory challenges that impacted his ability to eat certain foods, brush his teeth, and visit the dentist. She has also successfully helped him overcome several speech issues that impacted his articulation and now continues to work with him on developing his language and communication skills, flexible thinking, theory of mind, and strengthening his ability to build peer relationships. Deandra’s approach to treatment is truly focused on the whole child -- she frequently collaborates with other members of our son’s medical team and is very knowledgeable about diagnoses that often coexist with the speech-language disorders she treats – such as autism and ADHD. More than once she has helped us to find a diagnosis to confounding challenges that are tangential to her area of treatment by reaching out to colleagues, researching, or drawing from past-client experiences. Lastly, I have always been grateful for how supportive Deandra is about including me in my son’s sessions, the proactive effort she makes to ensure I understand her goals for activities, and the way she educates me on at-home activities to support my son’s progress. Of the many professionals on my son’s medical team, she’s the one we couldn’t do without and the one who has really given her all to help transform his challenges into successes. I can’t recommend her enough!
Deandra Schmidt, M.S., CCC-SLP
Speech Language Pathologist
Woodland Hills, CA
