JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – August is National Black Owned Business Month and we continue to share stories of business owners.
News4Jax spoke with the owner of a speech therapy business based in Jacksonville. The owner is a Florida licensed speech language pathologist.
“We’re working on our ‘ga’ sound,” Calonda Henry said.
Henry is working on articulation with four-year-old Milan.
“Speech therapy primarily focuses on articulation so how we say words and pronounce words and then we talk about language therapy from a development perspective,” Henry said.
She started her business, Broad Horizons Speech Therapy, last year. It’s an agency specializing in early developmental speech disorders from infants to 18-year-olds at home or care facilities.
“As the gap grows larger and time is missed for vital things that your child could be learning at the time,” Henry said.
She said many kids with language development come from underserved populations.
While Henry said it’s a predominantly white field with less than a quarter of African-Americans represented, those in the speech pathology industry can be an inspiration and connect with her young clients.
“So it’s very important for me as a speech language pathologist and specifically African-American to continue to promote my services,” she said. “And also for children who receive services, it’s a comfort them to sometimes be able to see someone who looks like them.”
Milan's mother says she's seen progress within the past six months.
"It gives her somebody to look up to someone that looks like her and she know she can do whatever she wants," Jaleesa Moore said.
From working with private clients and in schools, Henry says communication plays a large part in a child's overall development.. she says she passionate about serving the Jacksonville community as a DCPS gradate from Ed White herself.
Henry has also created a Facebook group for bringing together an online community to “help create understanding of speech and language developmental delays, disorders, and the impacts on education for parents.”