Jackson suffers from apraxia which means he was unable to communicate through speech with anybody else, but he is now able to speak and communicate through the actions of a raft of people, particularly himself, his mum, and Bron Conroy - and an app.
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00:00 - Yeah.
00:00 - I want some water.
00:02 I want some water.
00:14 - Awesome, there you go.
00:16 Hi, my name is Bron Conroy
00:19 and I'm a speech pathologist with Clear Kids.
00:22 So we're an early intervention speech pathology practice
00:25 in Franklin.
00:28 When Jackson and Cindy first came in,
00:30 we discovered that Jackson had apraxia of speech.
00:35 And whilst we were working on his ability
00:38 to produce sounds and sentences and sequence these,
00:42 we prescribed an AAC communication device
00:47 to augment his communication
00:48 so that he had a way to communicate
00:51 that was powerful and effective
00:53 and to develop his confidence and his participation,
00:57 particularly at childcare and in his family life at home.
01:01 So Jackson really blossomed and grew
01:04 into a really, really confident communicator.
01:06 And at the same time,
01:08 we were working on the strategies in therapy
01:10 for developing his sentences,
01:12 developing his vocabulary and his ability
01:15 to communicate a range of things,
01:19 like to be able to protest,
01:20 to be able to grab someone's attention,
01:22 to be able to express himself or describe things.
01:25 And then Jackson's progressed so much
01:28 that we actually have reshifted our therapy focus
01:31 to working on his literate ability,
01:33 so his ability to read and write.
01:35 And Jackson's in fact now in the top five readers
01:40 in his class.
01:41 So he's a very clever, clever little boy.
01:44 And he can communicate with a lot of confidence
01:47 and make friends and do all the things
01:49 that other seven-year-olds his age do.
01:52 - Good one.
01:53 - The coach tell me what to do.
01:58 - Ah, he told me what to do.
02:01 - Told me what to do.
02:03 - Good one.
02:04 - I have a torch.
02:08 - Do you?
02:10 - Yep.
02:11 (laughs)
02:12 I was just saying that.
02:13 - You were just saying that, yeah, fair enough.
02:16 Oh, what's that?
02:18 - I have a nice beat.