Today we’d like to introduce you to Suzanne Ducharme.
Suzanne, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I have been a pediatric speech-language pathologist for 23 years, working with children who have a range of medical and developmental conditions. Through my work experiences in outpatient rehabilitation, the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and early intervention, I have developed specialized skills in working with early communication development, feeding and swallowing issues and hearing loss. I have also spent a lot of time and energy in educating fellow professionals and parents about speech and language development and disorders, and the role of the speech language pathologist in supporting children from birth through adolescence to overcome their challenges and become their best selves. In 2001, I took a leap of faith and started working toward building a private practice while working part time at the job I had had for seven years. It started off slowly, but a year later, I had enough clients to open an office of my own. Fostering the growth of a private practice and learning to be a business owner has been one of the greatest joys and challenges of my life. Private practice has given me the freedom to see the kinds of clients that are most fulfilling, while continuing to develop my clinical and administrative skills. At the same time, I was on the journey of my own life, and began to study alternative healing modalities such as Reiki and Craniosacral Therapy to facilitate the healing of my own issues. Over time, it became clear to me that I could offer these same services to my traditional speech therapy clients, as a way of helping them to FEEL better while I was working on their issues with my medical and developmentally based training. It was a slow and gradual process for me to feel comfortable sharing this aspect of myself with clients, and to develop a method for combining traditional and alternative techniques together for the benefit of my clients. This is a process that continues today, since each person presents with their own unique blend of strengths and needs, and their own beliefs about the nature of the clinical relationship.
In addition, I have been feeling the need to more directly address the needs of parents who have children with special needs, and especially the parents of the children I see in my practice. Every day, I see parents who work so hard to help their children overcome obstacles, and they often put their own needs to the side. This can result in more stress, more physical illnesses, chronic fatigue and many other challenges. The next chapter of my business actually involves expanding my practice to include services designed to address the needs of parents. I want to validate their experiences and to provide them with direct support, education and coaching so that they have everything they need to parent successfully and from a place of confidence, empowerment and strength.
In the fall of 2016, my first book, Childhood Speech and Language Disorders: Supporting Children and Their Parents on the Path to Communication, was published by Rowman and Littlefield. This book represents the completion of a dream, but it also brings into physical form the evolution of my business. The first half of the book educates parents about speech and language development and the work and role of speech language pathologists, but the second half of the book is written as a letter to parents. It includes several chapters on the parent experience, and all the things that parents have taught me in my years of professional practice. So far, the feedback about the book has been very positive.
It is my plan to write more books in the coming years, as well as do more teaching and group work, so that I can expand beyond just the families that I can see in my local office. I have a lot more to share with the world, and all of the special children that I am able to help.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
This is such a great question, and one that encourages self-reflection of the whole sense of the journey. Truthfully, there have been many highs and lows along the way.
Professionally, I feel like I have been truly blessed. Not only for the families I have worked with, who shared their journeys with me, but also for the gentle way that I have been guided to study the next thing, or to evolve the practice with a new skill or method. I am so grateful for the support of my family and friends, who have kept me going when things were tough, and shared my celebrations too. As I look back, the greatest challenges have come at the cross roads in my professional life: choosing to go into private practice, opening an office, moving my location, changing the practice model to include alternative treatments. These choices have all required that steely combination of blind faith and resolve to do what was necessary to make it happen. Beyond that, the challenges that come up repeatedly relate more to wearing many hats as both a clinician and a business manager. How you are in your life is how you are in your business, so anything that limits me in life can show up to impede the growth and management of the practice. This can be things like fear, of success and failure, balancing work and life, and learning how to delegate so that I can focus on the things that matter most- working with children and families. Finally, working in a fee for service model means that my business is impacted by issues with reimbursement and insurance coverage that affect everyone in my profession. Keeping up with the latest regulations, clinical advances and techniques all take time, energy and dedication. The process is a balancing act, and one that I expect will continue in some form until I retire- way in the future!
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Since I moved to my new offices in Norwell, MA, I have had the opportunity to think about branding in a different way, and to reconsider how I bring my unique brilliance to my clients. My new sign reads: Family Centered Services and Holistic Speech Pathology.
I believe that this represents the next chapter of my business, which offers a blend of traditional, medical speech language pathology services with services designed to directly support parents in their own journey. To me, holistic speech pathology means truly looking at the whole child, and providing not just the best and most targeted speech and language services, but supporting the health and wellbeing of the child within the context of their whole world, beginning with their family. Sometimes that means expanding the team to include other professionals, because vision, hearing, motor, and emotional issues can directly impact the speed and trajectory of their progress in speech therapy. And sometimes that means offering an alternative healing method in addition to speech therapy because it is important to support optimal functioning of the nervous system and to help children FEEL better in addition to learning to communicate. This is what sets me apart from all but a few in the country who are exploring similar paths.
As I said earlier, I have highly specialized skills in early communication development, feeding and swallowing and hearing loss. I have quite a bit of experience in working with and supporting parents and in combining teaching with coaching so that parents can best support their child’s treatment program.
What I hear often from parents is that they feel heard, validated and understood. That I have a way of capturing their child’s strengths and needs and explaining them in a way that is easy to understand, and that I truly and deeply care about the families I work with.
While there are many things I am proud of in my long professional life, I am most proud of becoming a published author, and in still being in private practice after 16 years. It is hard work, but worth it, especially when my job is to put myself out of a job! I must be doing something right, since word of mouth referrals constitute a big part of my referral base.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
This question triggers a flood of semi-related memories. The theme that comes to top of mind is the gradual discovery of language and communication. This includes learning to read (initially a struggle) and finding power and connection in words, and the worlds that open with literacy. It includes my early experiences with the stage, and bringing words to life as part of the dramatic arts… (my first part was that of a wise cracking pumpkin in a play written by my third grade class.) I am the youngest of 6 children, and my siblings are much older than me. This means that I was always considered quite mature for my age, because I had to be to keep up. When I look back now, it seems that I was on this path from an early age- destined to do the work I am doing now.
Contact Info:
- Address: 15 Farrar Farm Road, Norwell, MA 02061
- Website: www.suzanne-ducharme.com
- Phone: 339-214-2906
- Email: Suzanne@ suzanne-ducharme.com
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