ICRA Method
From speech acts to narrative skills

Conceptual intensity

It is the enhancing effect of all that has been worked in each session, after involving the patient’s parents and/or caregivers in the treatment. For this it is necessary that they know the goals established in the treatment plan and understand the meaning of the work performed in each session. They must also have minimum guidelines and strategies to include in daily living, based on a progression criterion. Thus, the clinical attention time and progress in treatment are enhanced.

The intensity of a speech and language treatment is not limited to the number of session hours assigned. It is given by the contribution of many elements: a differential diagnosis and an adequate treatment plan, and the involvement of patient’s parents and caregivers from the therapeutic point of view.

This does not mean that they have to “work” with the patient in the way the therapist does. It is about being capable of including specific criteria in the most particular features of daily living based on guidelines and modeling provided during the treatment.

In search of “therapeutic intensity”, only understood as the number of hours of attention itself, essential aspects may be neglected concerning childhood, such as the following: every child (disabled or not) must have enough free time to play and rest according to his/her age (Convention on the Rights of the Child, 2013).