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| About icommunicate |
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What is icommunicate?Welcome to our website. If you are new to our site you may be wondering what it is all about? icommunicate is all about communication. Our goal is to improve communication and the communication potential of everyone; because communication is a basic human right. Most of us take communication for granted because it’s so easy. But for millions of people around the world it isn’t easy. Communication is an amazingly complex art made up of our eyes, our ears, our brain, our voice, and our body movements, and when something happens to one of these vital components we discover how hard communication is. The reasons we set up icommunicate are the same reasons I decided to become a speech and language therapist, we want to make a difference in peoples lives, we want to change things for the better. We want to improve your child’s speech difficulty or find a way for your parent to communicate following a stroke, we want to help your autistic child understand what is happening when his lesson changes at school, we want to teach the person with learning difficulties to make choices for themselves. In many countries, speech therapy is a scarce resource and many people do not have the resources to get private therapy. It is often difficult to get appropriate professional input when you have a communication disorder. Sometimes there are long waiting lists just to get an initial consultation with a speech and language therapist / pathologist. Maybe you or your loved ones already have access to speech and language therapy but it is only once a week or less. Hopefully, you can use this website to get more information, share experiences with other users, maybe use some of the resources to work in conjunction with an established speech therapy schedule, or to provide you with the necessary knowledge to make some progress independently. It is not our intention to replace face to face speech therapy, but we hope the information and resources provided on this website will help individuals make progress and achieve their communication goals. The advancement of technology and the internet means we now have the capability to reach out to many more people. You can now access information in your own home at a time that suits you. That is the beauty of icommunicate, it is flexible and fits in around you and your life.We want to find ways to help you communicate, we want to give you the programmes, strategies and tools to get your message across. This is a joint process between you and us. We will give you the tools and seeds and you can build a garden where communication will grow and flourish.
Our Vision Our vision and goal is to provide information, ideas, strategies and programmes through video presentations, resources, articles and downloads. These resources will facilitate adults and children with a wide range of communication difficulties. By allowing people with a communication difficulty, disorder or delay, to communicate their needs, thoughts and feelings we can create a greater level of inclusion and greatly enhance independence and quality of life. We will also offer ideas, information and activities to parents who just want to enhance their children’s speech and language development in those critical early years. We want to build a global community of users that can share stories, knowledge, ideas and information, and that is why we have built a state of the art Forum and have a free membership scheme which will give you access to a our messaging system and many more resources.
Dedicated and Experienced Professionals At icommunicate we have a number of experienced and dedicated professionals with a wealth of knowledge and expertise across many specialist fields Johan Langfield Senior Speech and Language Therapist and Director of Therapy Services
In 2007 Johan first began to work on his idea of building a comprehensive website where people could share information and resources relating to communication difficulties. Johan contacted David Eagle at The Big Picture, and over the next 2 years they developed the site that is now icommunicate. Johan currently lives in Nelson, New Zealand and runs a private practice and helps people with speech and communication difficulties throughout the world with his online service. Lauren Gillett Administrator and Researcher Lauren is our lead administrator and researcher. She coordinates much of the communication between our web users, members and customers. Our site is now so large that the administration responsiblities have become a full time job. Lauren also spends time researching information relating to communication disorders and treatment.Jeff Langfield Graphics and ArtworkHave you noticed all the great drawings, cartoons and graphics on our speech programmes and information sheets? Jeff is our resident artist, and adds his own unique style to each piece of artwork. David and Haylee Eagle Web Designers and Developers icommunicate has contact with other speech therapists / pathologists with a range of skills and in different geographical locations who will be part of our Online Therapy Service. The Future The site provides a comprehensive catalogue of information regarding communication and communication disorders, and this will continue to grow. We are working on increasing the number of downloadable resources and video tutorials that can be used in conjunction with speech therapy schedules and exercises given by your existing speech and language therapists / pathologists. We will also be providing our own online speech therapy service. We thoroughly recommend that you become a site member (it’s free!) so you can gain access to a greater level of features that are member only resources. Being a member will allow you to communicate with other members online, discuss and share experiences, and be part of a global community. We only have limited resources at icommunicate so we need you to share your knowledge and help the site to grow and develop.
What other people are saying about our site: Dear Johan, |
