We’re celebrating 7 million teletherapy sessions since 2009 by highlighting the inspiring leaders and innovators at Presence who are dedicated to building solutions for schools and students with diverse needs.
Hannah Werner, M.A., CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist (SLP) who specializes in school-based intervention, optimizing service delivery via telepractice. She has been a practicing SLP for 13 years and has been delivering remote SLP therapy for the last 8 years.
What’s your role at Presence?
I’m a clinical expert on our Service Design & Innovation team. I bring an SLP perspective to conversations that impact how Presence structures and delivers services, designs our teletherapy platform, and communicates about our services with therapists and schools.
What motivates you to continue to pioneer service design?
Service design is about creating a truly impactful experience for everyone we serve—the schools, the clinical providers, and the students. When we are in the business of delivering specialized therapy and assessments to students or supporting schools who are overwhelmed, excellence in all aspects of our service is critical. I’m grateful to be able to focus on the details that make the Presence experience special. It’s often the small things that add up to create a powerful and positive session.
Can you share 7 ways teletherapy has changed your practice?
1. Returns my focus to my craft
SLPs go through 6 years of education focused on the science of helping individuals with communication disorders meet their goals… but the job itself comes with so much more than that. Before coming to telepractice, I was always looking for or creating new activities and ways of engaging, organizing and reorganizing my materials to be easier to find and reuse, and documenting absolutely everything in 10 different ways, on top of the many other distractions you encounter on-site. Teletherapy makes it easier for me to focus on what’s best for my students. With today’s teletherapy platforms, everything is in one place—tools, activities, progress tracking—giving me more time and energy to focus on what matters most: helping kids reach their goals.
2. Brings everybody to the table
As an SLP, the real reward is helping students use their strategies and skills outside of therapy and in their daily routines, and teletherapy has helped me do a better job of that. When you’re in-person, it can be easy to provide therapy to a child without ever once interacting with others on their educational team. Teletherapy forces you to do a great job collaborating with and coaching teachers, paras, families, and whoever else works with your student. It’s just the nature of the service-delivery model.
3. Drives learning through student interests
We all know students can get distracted. But I’ve found with teletherapy, it’s really easy to pull in their interests to keep them engaged. Say a student is obsessed with dinosaurs, I can instantly pull up a T-Rex video or activity to get their attention back. That ability to pivot quickly, and keep things fun, can be a game-changer for sessions.
“Say a student is obsessed with dinosaurs, I can instantly pull up a T-Rex video or activity to get their attention back. That ability to pivot quickly, and keep things fun, can be a game-changer for sessions.”
4. Maximizes session impact through work-life balance
A healthy work-life balance is key, both for my well-being and for bringing my best to this work. Teletherapy simplifies so many things from creating lessons and activities to managing arduous paperwork. Documentation and planning are streamlined, and there’s no commute! Teletherapy gives me time back to recharge and show up energized for each session.
5. Creates a safe and welcoming space
For a lot of students, virtual sessions can be a more welcoming and productive way to learn. For example, if a student gets anxious with face-to-face interactions or eye contact, teletherapy can take the pressure off and feel less overwhelming. And, if they feel more comfortable, they’re more likely to open up and have a more positive experience.
6. Meets kids where they are
Kids are already connected online and using digital tools to play and learn. So teletherapy just makes sense. It’s also important for SLPs as a profession to explore this mode of learning and interacting, not only so we get comfortable with the tools kids are already using, but also so we can learn more about how to leverage them effectively in a changing world.
7. Augments education as we know it
Teletherapy isn’t a replacement for in-person instruction. But it’s a real game-changer for education. Not only does it address staffing needs and reach students in remote areas, it creates more opportunities for both students and clinicians to thrive. Some clinicians and students needed a format like this, and it exists for them. That’s something we can all celebrate.
“Some clinicians and students needed a format like this, and now it exists for them. That’s something we can all celebrate.”
What does 7 million teletherapy sessions mean to you?
It’s an opportunity for impact and innovation. Each session is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact. We’re always iterating and refining as a company committed to serving diverse students, and we use these sessions to discover new ways to make therapy and learning more impactful. What we’ve learned from 7 million sessions has an impact on our clinicians and students as well as speech-language therapy and education as a whole.
What’s your hope for the future of teletherapy?
Honestly, each session holds incredible potential to gain insights, which can help us refine and improve therapy and assessment access for every student in whatever modality we can reach them. And that’s the point of it all. I am most excited about what we’re learning from the breadth of that 7 million sessions.
Inspired by the positive impact of teletherapy in special education? See the real-life milestones achieved on the road to 7 million sessions.
