Effectiveness of functional communication therapy by volunteers for peoplewith aphasia following stroke

The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a scripted modular interv ention programme called Speaking Out. Speaking Out is administered by train ed volunteers in the home and focuses on the everyday communicative activit ies of aphasic stroke patients. The experimental design used repeated measu res to examine the effect of counterbalanced treatments across individual s ubjects and across two matched groups. One group improved significantly on the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) after the Speaking Out programme but there were no significant differences on an y of the functional communication measures. Some change to health status sc ales was however found. There was a significant difference on both the WAB and the ASHA Functional Assessment of Communication Skills (ASHA FACS) for the other group following the Speaking Out programme. They also demonstrate d some positive changes on the health status scales following the programme . There were more significant differences on intragroup comparisons than in tergroup comparisons. For group 2, the ASHA FACS and the SF-36 showed signi ficant differences between the Speaking Out programme and the recreational programme or no treatment at all. It was concluded that long standing aphas ic speakers may benefit from a 10 week functional communication therapy pro gramme delivered by trained volunteers.