In a recent testimony, a parent expressed her sincere gratitude toward a member of her child’s care team at the RiteCare Childhood Language Center of San Bernardino.
They voiced their heartfelt story,
“Our daughter has been struggling with speech since she was very young. We noticed that she had trouble speaking at about 3 years old and have had interventions for her speech since. Just when we thought we started to get a handle on everything, in January of 2020 the pandemic began. Schools and speech services were being disrupted and her speech impairment began to really affect her at school as her entire Kindergarten experience was virtual. She missed core foundation opportunities with reading, writing, and math. Her teacher couldn’t understand her most of the time and her IEP online and speech-language therapy online were not sufficient for her to focus and grow. Putting a 5-year-old in front of the screen and hoping they retain any information was an impossible task. We spent countless hours and late nights trying to keep up. We were working at the hospital and had to help all our kids focus on virtual learning.
After the pandemic, we did everything we could to make sure she could catch up in school. Having a speech impairment and having both virtual kindergarten and 1st grade had put her at risk of repeating a grade as she could barely read or write and spoke very little. We immediately started sessions of in-person speech-language therapy & tutoring. After one year of effort, we found some improvement, but she wasn’t at the same level as her peers and began to get picked on constantly for her speech issues. We recently had to switch our health insurance and lost services from her previous speech therapist. We struggled to find somewhere that would take our insurance or that wasn’t full or waitlisted. We wanted her to go somewhere that would work with us and help her grow to her full potential.
We found the RiteCare Childhood Language Center on Google search and saw the wonderful reviews. We started therapy with Ms. Jovie at the Center on August 3rd, 2023. Ms. Jovie has been the most caring, straightforward, supportive, and passionate person we have ever met. I have never worked with someone who cared about our daughter and her future as much as we did. Ms. Jovie cares. She is patient but teaches our daughter to put in the work without making excuses. In just the few sessions we have had with Ms. Jovie, she was able to help and identify problem areas that our daughter had that individuals prior had not identified.
She helps her stay focused on tasks and challenges her. She has already made an improvement with her speech while with Ms. Jovie for this short time. Not only does Ms. Jovie work with our daughter, but she works with our entire family and includes us in projects or goals for her. She values each child that comes into her office and specializes in her teaching plan that is unique to each child. I appreciate her for listening to our family and helping our daughter grow with her speech and am so grateful for the California Scottish Rite Foundation and Ms. Jovie. I can’t wait to see how much more she will grow while continuing her journey with speech-language therapy.”