December 17, 2007
ASL sessions, ASL coaching, ASL skills enhancement, health insurance pays!
Kevin Gamache, ASLPride raised an excellent point about ASL Modifiers . I created a vlog last night in response to his suggestion and thinking more already, I wanted to redo but decided to leave it as it is. A lot can be discussed.Here are pointers:
- Actual terms used for ASL modifiers are like ASL coaching, ASL skills enhancement, ASL sessions, similar as voice coaching, accent reduction, speech sessions, speech language therapy.
- Vloggers fluent in ASL can help with feedback although with limit. Areas in ASL that are still developmental have two main things: Weakness - errors can be fixed right away and other types need more time for acquisition. ASL teachers with at least few years of teaching experience and those who already studied ASL structures can point out more clearly which are worth concentrating on and those best left to improve with time.
- Anyone with speech language problems can have their own health insurance pay for speech/language assessment and sessions with speech audiologist to help with improving their speech and language skills. So anyone deprived of ASL input in their childhood CAN try to negotiate with their health insurance to have this coverage for ASL skills coaching.One time I did get approval for treatment not specifically stated in the policy. I insisted acupuncture treatments to treat chronic headache problems because no medicine worked. My insurance had an underwriter to approve 10 sessions, twice for a year and these 20 sessions did work.
- I am not too crazy about the word “therapy”, it is in a way detrimental. I choose this term coaching just like movie stars from other countries just hire their own voice coaching to smoothen out their accent and odd wordings in English as second language. However for getting insurance coverage, insurers would use a more medical term “therapy”, that is the way how they can underwrite. Let them say it so that you can get coverage and you still tell your friends that you got an ASL coach!
There is another option - negotiate with your work administrator to include ASL skills enhancement for professional development. I tutored numberless signers to improve their ASL skills for their employment, tenure, and promotion. At the most of time it was covered by their employment benefit.
See links about voice coaching, catering services with fees. My Voice Coach, Your Voice Coach, Broadcast Voice Specialist, Stress Reduction Counselor, Voice Power Studios
Standard fee for speech language service an hour is around $75 and it can go as high as $150 an hour. See fees at a speech language center, this center does include ASL service - scroll down to see that. ADHEARENCE, LLC
I did look for information about health insurance coverage for services in Spanish and bilingualism but I have not came across anything relevant yet.
Having a full cognitive language experience is not a privilege, it is your right and
a human right.
Anne Marie's metaASL is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.