Trauma-Responsive Speech-Language Therapy for Children

Children bring their experiences of stress, adversity, and trauma into every interaction, shaping how they communicate, learn, engage, and participate in everyday life. For speech-language practitioners, understanding the many forms of trauma and their effect on literacy, social interaction, regulation, and academic participation is essential to providing effective, equitable, and affirming services. 

In Trauma-Responsive Speech-Language Therapy for Children, renowned scholar and clinician Yvette D. Hyter presents a strengths-based framework for understanding and supporting children through trauma-responsive practice. Grounded in culturally and linguistically responsive practice and the social model of disability, this transformative resource bridges neuroscience, communication development, and real-world clinical and school-based application. Through accessible explanations, case-based insights, and actionable strategies, readers will learn how to create safe, affirming therapeutic environments; conduct trauma-responsive assessments; adapt intervention approaches; reframe behavior through a trauma-responsive lens; and collaborate effectively with educators, families, and interdisciplinary teams. Emphasizing resilience, regulation, and meaningful participation, this book equips speech-language therapists to move beyond deficit-based approaches and toward trauma-responsive communication supports that help children thrive.

Key Features

• Explores traumatic experiences, such as adverse childhood experiences (e.g., abuse, neglect), community violence, racism, historical trauma, displacement, and impoverishment
• Explains how trauma and neurobiological stress responses affect communication, language, literacy, and learning
• Provides practical trauma-responsive assessment and intervention strategies for educational and clinical settings
• Features numerous case examples, vignettes, and reflection activities
• Offers strategies for fostering safety, co-regulation, resilience, and meaningful engagement
• Applies trauma-responsive principles to speech and language service delivery, interdisciplinary collaboration, and systems of support
• Implementation-focused figures and tables present original frameworks, clinical models, and trauma-responsive clinical resources
• PluralPlus companion website with downloadable, ready-to-use clinical and educational resources from the book, including assessment checklists, intervention planning forms, reflection tools, and a policy audit tool

PluralPlus Online Ancillaries

Forms/Documents

Contents

Preface
About the Author
Reviewers

Chapter 1. The Big Picture: Foundations and Definitions 
Chapter 2. The Biology of Trauma: Brain, Body, and Communication Connections    
Chapter 3. Words Have Power: Language, Regulation, and Trauma-Responsive Practice
Chapter 4. Trauma-Responsive Care and Its Principles
Chapter 5. The Impact of Trauma on School-Based Communication, Language, and Literacy 
Chapter 6. Reimagining School Supports: A Trauma-Responsive Framework for Speech-Language Clinicians
Chapter 7. Speech-Language Assessment Reframed: Communication in Context
Chapter 8. Trauma-Responsive Intervention Practice
Chapter 9. Trauma-Responsive Policies in Schools 
Chapter 10. Thriving: Supporting Resiliency and Recovery
Chapter 11. Reflective and Reflexive Practices
Chapter 12. Looking Ahead 

Index

Trauma-Responsive Speech-Language Therapy for Children comes with access to supplementary student and instructor resources on a PluralPlus companion website.

The companion website is located at: https://www.pluralpublishing.com/publication/trsltc

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES:

The resources include Forms/Documents.

To access the resources, you must register on the companion website and log in using the access code located in the front of your textbook.

*Note: If you have purchased this textbook used or have rented it, your access code will not work if it was already redeemed by the original buyer of the book. Plural Publishing does not offer replacement access codes for used or rented textbooks.