One of my challenges here is that this clinic is typically the “last” stop/hope for folks — more often than not, they’ve  already been through acute care facilities, outpatient rehab, and whatever home care their insurance would pay for.  I am usually consulted (a) when other efforts have proved unproductive and/or (b) there’s no more money.  This frequently means that there may well be a lot of non-functional habits and frustration built up.  As a result, what we do here may be very different than I would do if I was at any of the prior stages (front line/acute care, outpatient, in-home).

That said, my bias is clear:  I am strongly in favor of multimodal intervention for pretty much any/everyone.  I signed and used visual schedules made from Boardmaker symbols with my own children as infants, I used hand signals and visual cues for kids with artic/language and fluency, I write things out and provide visual aids with graduate students seeking a Master’s degree, and I would never never never meet with someone I knew had experienced a brain event and just talk to them and plan for them to just talk to me.    In short, I feel like my own sense of myself as an SLP aligns pretty well by the Beukelman & Mirenda Participation Model which is described in their AAC text.

As it applies specifically to persons with aphasia, there is additional information about the Life Participation Approach to Aphasia:
– ASHA statement: http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/LPAA/
– ASHA Leader article:  http://bit.ly/1wjDQr7
– Supporting Communication for Adults with Acute and Chronic Aphasia (Simmons-Mackie, King, & Beukelman, 2013)

I feel like the AAC Aphasia Screening materials from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, http://aac.unl.edu/screen/screen.html  may be helpful to “aid in determining whether the person with aphasia can benefit from partner dependent or independent alternative communication strategies” (quote from the Purpose description, p. 3).

I have also found the following courses throughwww.speechpathology.com to be enormously helpful:
* #5361 AAC and Aphasia by Sarah Wallace
* #4208 Use of AAC Devices and Strategies for People with Aphasia by Sarah Wallace
– #5157 Steps to Success with Technology for individuals with Aphasia by Denise McCall
– #5742 AAC Medicare/Medicaid Funding and Documentation by Patricia Ourand
* #5138 Selecting Apps for Therapy: A tutorial for SLPs on using an EBP model to assist with choosing intervention tools by Lara Wakefield & Theresa Schaber
* #5186 The PICO Template for Reviewing Speech-Language Therapy Apps: A decision-making tool for SLPs by Lara Wakefield & Theresa Schaber
– #5781 AAC Apps:  Finding the Right One For Your Client by Carole Zangari
* #5518 Denial of Deficits and Aphasia by George Wallace
* #5068 Coping with the impact of Aphasia:  What do Significant Others Need and How Can SLPs Help? by Barbara B. Shadden
* #6079 Helping Clients and Families Attain Their Goals:  A Basic Counseling Function by Audrey Holland — although this is described as being generally about counseling (and it is), the examples are more specific to persons with aphasia.
– #5447 Counseling Around the Edges by Audrey Holland
– #4995 Counseling and Communication Disorders:  Working with Feelings and Emotions by Michael FlahiveThese are roughly in the order that I might rank them in strength/value related to Aphasia, plus the asterisks represent the best within each category.  Many of these are available in a variety of formats although I tended to take the “Text” courses when possible.  There are other Aphasia, Aphasia & AAC, & apps decision-making resources at www.speechpathology.com I just haven’t gotten to them yet.

Finally, the AAC-RERC has a free webcast on AAC for Aphasia: A Review of Visual Scenes Display Project:  http://bit.ly/1nwWn3q and an example funding report:  http://bit.ly/1t5dawn