To be eligible for speech and/or language services in the state of North Carolina, a child must present with a communication disorder, such as stuttering, impaired articulation/phonology, a language impairment, or voice impairment that adversely affects a child’s educational performance and needs specialized instruction.
Language Impairment – A significant deficiency which is not consistent with the student’s chronological age in one or more of the following areas:
-a deficiency in receptive language skills to gain information;
-a deficiency in expressive language skills to communicate information;
-a deficiency in processing (audiotory perception) skills to organize
information; and
-a deficiency in the social use of language (pragmatics) and the rules that
govern that usage.
Articulation Impairment – A significant deficiency in ability to produce sounds in
conversational speech which is not consistent with chronological age.
Phonological Process Disorder - A simplification of the sound system that
adversely affects intelligibility.
Fluency Impairment – Abnormal interruption in the flow of speech by
repetitions or prolongations of a sound, syllable, or by avoidance and struggle
behaviors.
Voice Impairment – A significant deficiency in pitch, intensity, or quality
resulting from pathological conditions or inappropriate use of the vocal
mechanism.
*Taken from the North Carolina Guidelines for Speech-Language Pathology Services in Schools 9-19-06*