“I would like to say how grateful Alistair, his father and I are for the great success the (Fluency and Confidence) course was. Alistair and I both very much enjoyed our three days with START and we both learned a lot. While Alistair already knew the (fluency technique), START has shown him how to take on responsibility for his own progress. He also learned how to structure his learning at home, use his tools in his daily life and the importance of regular practice. His highlights were meeting other kids who stutter, meeting the two adult ex START clients and becoming noticeably more fluent and confident.
The parent day was very well structured and many issues and how to deal with them became clearer to me. I very much liked that the pre-teens came from different backgrounds and I liked the fact that the staff: child ratio was very high due to having speech language therapy students involved. The students were a nice group of young enthusiastic people who connected well with the pre-teens.” – C. Glennie
“When we started we were expecting a “fix” or something to stop our child stuttering but throughout our experience we have learned to support and help our child to manage his speech without always focusing on his stuttering. Ultimately we wanted our child to be a confident speaker and he is well on his way to achieve that.” – Parent of a school aged child – Aug 2017
“Many people down-played Chloe’s stutter without understanding anything about it. My husband agreed with others that it would get better on its own but as a Mum, when my daughter couldn’t speak a sentence and started to lose her bubbly confidence, I couldn’t [just] do nothing. To understand the research and treatment options meant we could start to help Chloe and feel confident we were doing something proactive. Through treatment we had ups and downs and it took much longer than I thought it would. When the stuttering returned, I took it personally thinking I wasn’t doing the treatment right. Now we are [at] the other side of treatment that feeling has turned to empowerment. I know how to support Chloe to be stutter-free and that’s a great skill to have as Chloe’s mum” – Feb 2016