Your Child Has So Much to Say.

Because for most of our clients, this isn’t a speech problem. Non-speaking doesn’t mean non-comprehending. When a child understands you and still can’t answer, the barrier usually isn’t language. It’s getting a body to execute what a mind intends: motor planning, initiation, sequencing, sensory regulation, and the sustained coordination it takes to reach a letter on purpose.

That is occupational therapy’s home ground. We treat spelling as a motor skill built through practice, in the environments where your child actually lives.

Speech-language pathology owns real territory and we refer to it. Articulation, expressive and receptive language, swallowing: if that’s the barrier, an SLP is who you want, and we’ll tell you so.

What the AAC field as a whole has struggled with is access and follow-through. Device abandonment is one of the most persistent problems in augmentative communication, and it usually traces back to motor demand, poor fit, or a system that never made it into daily family life. Those are precisely the variables OT is trained to solve, and it’s why daily practice at home is built into the program rather than left to chance.

That’s the right question, and it’s the standard we hold ourselves to: communication counts when it’s demonstrably the speller’s own. We work toward autonomous spelling, fade prompts deliberately, video-document progress so you can see the change yourself, and involve caregivers throughout. Our case studies aren’t RCTs. But when n=1 is your child, it makes all the difference.

RPM is contested, and we’ll say it before you google it. SLP professional bodies worry a facilitator holding the board could influence the message, and the peer-reviewed base is thin. Those concerns deserve an answer, not a dodge.

Evidence also includes the people it’s about. Non-speaking advocates who spell to communicate have said for years that presuming competence changed their lives. When research lags behind lived experience, the honest move is to listen to both.

It’s the most important nuance of this field and we treat it that way. Prompts are a motor scaffold, not a destination: we fade them deliberately, track independence over time, and treat autonomous communication as the only real outcome. The goal is your kid’s words, not our prompts.

We don’t know, and anyone who says they do is selling something. Progress depends on consistency, trust, age, sensory needs, and both client and Boardside Coach™ learning. What we promise is a structured, supported attempt with honest measurement along the way, and honest conversations if it isn’t working.

Families of children aged 6 to 18 receive $6,000 per year through the BC Autism Funding Unit, and many apply it to programs like this one. BC’s funding system is transitioning to a new provincial program (see below), so what applies to your family depends on timing. We’ll walk through it together on the intro call.

We anticipate this program will be eligible under the upcoming BC Children and Youth Disability Benefit, and that most non-speaking children will qualify through a needs-based review or for direct admission through the At-Home Program.

Anticipate is the honest word here. The province is still finalising how the new system works, so we won’t promise you a number until March 31, 2027. What we can do on the intro call is tell you where your family likely lands.

Often, yes. This program is delivered and billed as occupational therapy, which makes it eligible under most other funders that cover OT services: distributed learning schools, the Variety Heart Fund, and others like them.

If you’re holding funding and aren’t sure whether it stretches to this, bring it to the call. We’d rather check than have you assume the answer is no.

We provide receipts you can submit under occupational therapy coverage. We don’t direct bill extended health.

How plans categorize OT varies, so check before you assume you’re not covered. Sometimes occupational therapy has its own annual limit. Sometimes it sits inside a shared allied health practitioner pool. Sometimes it falls under mental health coverage. Your insurance provider can tell you which applies to your plan.

Occupational therapy is also an eligible medical expense for the medical expense tax credit, so keep your receipts either way.

Yes. The program is telehealth-first and designed to work anywhere in BC. Weekly practitioner lessons and coaching happen remotely, your Boardside Coach™ delivers daily practice at home, and home visits are scheduled around your region. The in-person OTA option as Boardside Coach™ is location dependent and can be discussed during your discovery call.

We only serve ages 10 to 18 right now, so we can refine the model on the group we’ve had success with. If your child is outside that range, subscribe to our mailing list, to get clinic programming updates. We'’d rather know you exist for when we widen the program!