Effectiveness of parent and tutor training in the treatment of Childhood Apraxia of Speech.

This study explores the effectiveness of training parents and school tutors to use the treatment strategy, Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing (DTTC) to improve the speech skills of children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). This strategy utilises the principles of motor learning to cue children with CAS to say difficult sound combinations. Parents will provide the treatment at home to the children for 15 minutes twice a day 5 days a week in two 4 week blocks. School tutors will provide the treatment at school in two five week blocks. Both parents and tutors will be trained in direct one-to-one sessions with one of the researchers who is also a speech pathologist. These training sessions will be for 1 hour a week over 4 weeks. The outline for the study is as follows: * 4-5 weeks of baseline data collection (probe data is collected from the child once a week to obtain a stable baseline) * 4 weeks of training. This takes place in the clinic or school with the parent or tutor and the child attending for 1-2 hours once a week. * 4-5 weeks of home or school treatment. Parents work with the children in the home and the tutors work with their students at school. 15 minutes twice a day, five days a week. Probe data is collected once a week. * 2 week maintenance period. No therapy is done. Probe data is still collected once a week. * 4-5 weeks home or school treatment. Parents and tutors will work on a second set of target words. Probe data is still collected each week. * 4 weeks maintenance. No therapy is conducted. Probe data is still collected once a week. At the end of this period, the post assessment data is collected. This is done either at school or at the clinic. The researchers will maintain regular contact with the parents and tutors to monitor their adherence to the intervention.