I am writing this letter to thank you for giving my son the opportunity of acquiring language and speech. He will be able to communicate his basic needs and achieve his potential through this grant.

Our school district couldn't afford summer school and our insurance wouldn't cover therapy.  You can imagine our excitement when we found out about Small Steps in Speech, applied for the grant, and eventually received a grant to pay for 15 weeks of therapy!!

When we arrived a the Kaufman Children's Center in Detroit, Amanda only had single word spontaneous speech and that was limited to approximately 50 words and were not very intelligible by anyone. After working for 4 days with Nancy Kaufman, Amanda now has some 3 word sentences and is more intelligible to others. She has a long road to travel to become resolved, however, because of the grant you gave her which allowed us to bring her to the Kaufman Children's Center, she now has a better opportunity to become an effective speaker one day.

She knows what she wants to say but she can not get her lips, tongue, and vocal cords to work together to form sounds into words. In therapy, Kyra is learning to make speech sounds as she plays with a variety of toys, e.g. saying "ba ba" as blocks fall down and go boom, saying "hi" as Jack pops out of a box.

I wanted to thank you so much for the kind grant for my son, Finley.  This has helped our family tremendously.  His speech sessions with the therapist have really helped him.

Since receiving the grant Julien has been able to attend speech every week for one session a week instead of twice a month previous to the grant.  This has been a great help to Julien making progress in his speech as well as other areas such as reading and writing.

Small Steps in Speech has been such a wonderful opportunity for both Tomas and Joseph.  Lucky for Tomas and Joseph SSIS stepped in to award these young boys with a gift of service something that their families will be forever thankful for.

We’ve gone from two to three words used to request the most basic of needs, to having the honor of being able to get to know our daughter. With every passing day, aided by her Speech therapy, we see emerging a witty, girly, diva personality, who can now voice her wants, needs, preferences, and love. Just last week, we witnessed Celina’s first unprompted question! She pointed to a flower, and asked “Mommy, what’s that?” Mom responded, “A flower”. She giggled and asked again, “what’s that?” Mom said, “It’s a daisy”, and Celina replied, “Daisies are beautiful, Mommy.”

Small Steps in Speech is a wonderful organization.  They have made it possible for Noah, a child with autism spectrum disorder, to receive speech therapy.  I strongly support the Small Steps in Speech organization.  They are making a difference in the lives of children by providing the means for them to attend speech and language therapy.

Please, please accept our deepest gratitude.  I am amazed by the generosity in your hearts.  I cannot tell you how much this is going to positively affect this amazing boy.  Bless you all.  Bless the memory of Staff Sgt. Marc J. Small.