Why You Need These Speech and Language Questionnaires for Parents (and need to delete all others)

During the health pandemic it became clear which parts of our jobs were doable with some adjustments and which were incredibly painful. As all of us were adapting to working remotely and with limited interaction with parents, teachers, and nurses, gathering the information that we needed for referrals and evaluations ground to a halt.

We leaned heavy on our community of SLPs and the 54 districts that we do evaluations for and gathered many versions of the health, intake, teacher and parent questionnaires for speech and language evaluations that we could find. A few of them were pretty good. Some of them were questionable, and others were downright insulting!

It became evident why we were having so much trouble getting these forms back from the people we sent them to and why it was taking so much time for us to go through them when it came time to write the report up.

Almost Every Parent Questionnaire for Speech Therapy was:

1. Too long

The record breaker was 11 pages. That’s pretty daunting for any parent. Think about taking your child to the doctor and being asked to fill out that many forms.

2. Contained old, outdated, and unnecessary information

As to why many forms were too long, it became clear that many forms were “updated” by adding more, needed questions but not by redoing the entire form and getting rid of redundancies or questions that were obsolete.

3. Not in the order needed to write your report

Speech reports have required sections that by-and-large come in the same order for each report. Why don’t the parent questionnaire for speech and language evaluation follow this pattern so we aren’t looking through them over and over again?

4. Potentially insulting or disingenuous to parents and teachers

We are thankful for the ways our field is challenging itself and all of the terminology that we may have used for quite a long time. But how does our evaluation benefit from asking questions like: “How old were you when you got pregnant?” Or how about this doozy: “Check all that apply: Child comes from a broken home.” Ouch. As a parent, would you be eager to fill this out?

5. Not in their home language

We do have access to amazing interpreters and campus stuff to help us gather information in many cases. But this slows the process down. What if we could gather the information on the front and have them translate when it is convenient in their busy schedule?

What Does the Best Intake Form or Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation Look Like?

This is where it gets fun. The pandemic gave us the opportunity to re-evaluate the entire way we think about the data collection portion of the evaluation process. It was clear that there were 7 pieces of information that were gathering. That’s not a lot! But they all have very specific requirements and are given out to very different people. It was also clear that most SLPs lacked the one form that has become the hallmark for our speedy, accurate evaluations: our assessment impressions!

Assessment Impressions: The ability to accurately and quickly capture all of your thoughts while you are evaluating and more importantly, immediately after you finish. This also helps us if we can’t test in a single window of time.

Classroom Observation: This is the second form that most SLPs missed. It wasn’t that they weren’t doing the observation, they were just relying on memory or taking notes somewhere. Not only does a classroom observation form help organize this, it makes it possible for someone else to do if for you!

Intake Form: These gather all of the parent, teacher, and student contact information.

Parent Questionnaire: Only the facts! In the correct order! In parent-friendly language! In their home language! In a kind tone! For goodness sake, we are suggesting their child has an impairment, we need to interact with compassion.

Teacher Questionnaire: Written so that teachers can understand them and complete them in their busy schedule. These forms need to address their concerns and relate directly to the classroom progress that the teacher is identifying as being the reason for the referral.

Health Form: This is the most straightforward of all the forms but we are often making our nurses and healthcare professionals rewrite the exact same thing every time. Why not check-boxes?

Gratitude is too small of a word to describe the number of people who stepped up to make these resources possible:

• English Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: Thank you Evalubox and Bilinguistics Team
• Spanish Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: ¡Gracias! Yasmin Luque Lopez, Eugenia Coronado, & Leah Mashian, LA Unified SD
• Arabic Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: شكرًا لك! Sommer Hassan
• Bengali Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: ধন্যবাদ! Zerin Zakaria LA Unified SD
• Farsi Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: متشکرم! Shannon Firouzian LA Unified SD & Farinam Pletka
• French Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: Merci! Melissa Farkouh, Rose Guerline Rene, Irene Pereira – Meyersohn, & Margaret Belanger-Schaadt
• German Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: Danke schön! Anelisa Myrick LA Unified SD
• Haitian Creole Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: Mèsi! Neimana Herard
• Hindi Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: धन्यवाद! Puja Sharma LA Unified SD
• Hmong Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: Ua tsaug! Nkauj-Huab Meludya Lo & Michelle Posner
• Hungarian Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: Köszönöm! Letizia Hendrickson
• Japanese Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: ありがとう！Tamae Sugiura LA Unified SD
• Mandarin Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: 谢谢你！ Jie Yang Texas State University & Dr. Yao Du University of Southern California
• Portuguese Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: Obrigado! Ticiana Di Carlo LA Unified SD
• Russian Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: Спасибо! Marina Vaynman LA Unified SD
• Vietnamese Parent Questionnaire for Speech and Language Evaluation: Cảm ơn! Andrea Hughes