I started my speech-language pathologist career in the School District of Palm Beach County in 2017, where I completed my clinical fellowship working with various special education preschool classrooms. During this year, I served students in their classroom providing speech and language therapy, conducting evaluations, and leading their IEP meetings to ensure that they received the necessary services to promote their development and learning in the school setting. During that year, I was trained to be a bilingual diagnostician, to appropriately service and assess students that used Spanish as their first language. During my first year as a licensed speech-language pathologist, I was promoted to lead the Communication Model Program, where preschool students with speech-language needs would receive services in a dynamic classroom setting. I was also in charge of completing all the bilingual evaluations for all the culturally and linguistically diverse students in the school. In August 2019, I started a new job opportunity in a private clinical setting in Charlotte, NC.  During this year, I provided services to school-age children and I was primarily in charge of servicing and assessing Spanish-speaking patients and their families. 

        During those years,  I developed the skills and passion to work with the bilingual population. These experiences lead me to the realization that bilingual families were also facing difficulties communicating with clinicians.  Language differences between clinicians and families were a reason why families were missing their children's achievements and unable to contribute to the IEP process.  In both the school district and the private sector, the bilingual patients were not receiving appropriate services. This issue directly impacts our patient's progress and parent involvement in their everyday learning experiences. I immediately felt the responsibility to address this issue in my work environment.  For this reason, I like to think that is my professional purpose and calling to make a difference and continue to work toward the goal of impacting the bilingual population and their families.

       I created this resource page as my capstone project for the completion of my clinical doctorate. This project is meaningful to me, and it captures my vocation of serving the community where I belong, and where I have dedicated my years of work experience. This project was created based on the needs and experiences I had faced together with many Spanish-speaking and bilingual families. Being able to promote culturally responsive services, where these patients are heard, considered, assessed, served, and included is my purpose. Using The Bilingual SLP is a way for me to give back and be a part of the change. This project can help reduce over and under-identification of speech and language disorders in the bilingual population, and contribute to our field by supporting other clinicians in the development of evidence-based assessment skills, overcoming their barriers in serving this population, and to better serve bilingual children and families.