The efficacy of the ‘Mixed Up Marty’ home programme. Does the ‘Mixed up Marty’ home programme improve the speech accuracy of children with speech sound disorders?

Background: Children with SSD’s constitute 40% of SLT caseloads (Joffe & Pring, 2008). Treatment before school age is necessary to avoid a negative impact on literacy, social skills, behaviour and academic success (Law, et al., 2010). In light of current SLT waiting lists in Ireland, an effective treatment offering immediate access to therapy and relief to the pressures of SLT waiting lists is essential. Objectives: This study aims to investigate if children with SSD’s, who receive a parent implemented home programme, based on principles of phonological therapy, improve more than untreated children in terms of speech accuracy. In addition, the study will analyse the utilization and acceptability of the home programme as well as its generalisation to real life as measured by the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS). Methods: Twelve monolingual English speaking children with SSD’s, aged 3:0 – 4:11, were assessed for speech accuracy and randomly divided into a treatment now and a control group. Following parent training, parents in ‘treatment now’ group implemented the programme with their children for fifteen minutes a day, six days a week, for seven weeks. All participants were reassessed on the same measures post intervention to measure change. Results: There were no statistically significant differences on measures of DEAP and RAPT PCC, pre and post intervention nor on functional communication measures for either group. The home programme was deemed highly acceptable by parents. The implications of these findings are discussed. Conclusions: Despite a high level of home programme acceptance, it did not significantly improve the speech accuracy or functional communication measures of participants.