Thank You for Visiting and Welcome to Our Practice!

Little Sunshine Pediatric Therapy LLC, is a community based therapy company dedicated to serving children birth-21 years of age. Evaluations and intervention are based on the most current evidence-based research and each therapy program is individualized based on the child’s needs in order to help them communicate effectively with loved ones and peers. We encourage parents and caregivers to participate in therapy sessions in order for us to provide education and training as well as ensure generalization of skills learned during intervention sessions. We value and welcome clients of all backgrounds, abilities, and skill levels.

At this time, we provide speech and language therapy in the comfort of your home, conveniently at your child’s school or daycare, or virtually via a secure teletherapy platform. Little Sunshine Pediatric Therapy LLC provides speech and language services to St. Petersburg, Pinellas Park, Seminole, Largo, Clearwater, Palmetto, and Parrish. We look forward to the opportunity of working with your child and providing them with high quality speech and language therapy services.

It’s our mission to help each child optimize their communication and daily living skills for an increased sense of well-being and confidence. Through individualized treatment, we strive to build trusting relationships with our clients as well as their families. Little Sunshine Pediatric Therapy LLC believes in empowering children by building upon their strengths in order to achieve their goals and are dedicated to making a positive impact on every child’s life.

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Meet Ms. Ashley, Founder/Owner of Little Sunshine Pediatric Therapy
Ashley Kaczur Scarpa, M.S, CCC-SLP
Ashley Scarpa, M.S, CCC-SLP

Ms. Ashley is speech-language pathologist, who is licensed by the state of Florida and certified by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). She received her undergraduate degree from the Richard Stockton College of NJ in Speech Pathology and Audiology. After that, she moved to sunny South Florida where she received her Master's degree from Nova Southeastern University. She is a PROMPT trained therapist. For over 8 years, Ms. Ashley has worked with children birth-21 years of age as well as adults, in a variety of settings, including home health, daycares, preschools, clinics, hospitals, and public/private schools. She has experience working with neurodivergent children, suspected/childhood apraxia of speech, fluency disorders, auditory processing disorders, expressive and receptive language disorders, developmental delays, articulation/phonological disorders, pragmatic language disorders, feeding disorders, and Augmentative and Alternative Communication.

Ms. Ashley’s professional experiences have helped her develop a communication style which encompasses a mixture of passion, empathy, and positive reinforcement for her patients as well as their family. Ms. Ashley started this practice as she has a passion for individually helping each child communicate across all environments with their loved ones and peers, using all modalities of communication. Ms. Ashley believes that the best approach to therapy is one that involves not only the child, but the parents/caregivers as well, in order to generalize skills that are learned during intervention sessions. Furthermore, she believes in a coaching model, where parents/caregivers are welcomed and encouraged to join in on therapy sessions in order to increase carryover and provide consistent education to meet each child’s needs.

Ms. Ashley is a new Mama to the sweetest little boy and when she is not working, she loves to spend time with her husband and son. They enjoy going on walks, going to the beach, and exploring St. Petersburg together as a family.

Start your child's speech and language therapy journey by clicking here to contact us for more information!


Services
Speech and Language Evaluations

We provide comprehensive and individualized speech and language evaluations in homes, schools, and/or daycares. Standardized assessments are used as well as informal assessments and observation in order to identify your child’s current skills. This will help us establish the best plan of care for your child.

Speech and Language Therapy

We offer individualized, one-on-one treatment at home, in preschools, daycares, private schools, or virtual settings.

Presentations & Professional Development

Evaluating, diagnosing, and treating various speech and language disorders for individual clients is what we do best. However, It is our job as a profession to be the educators and to advocate for children and adults with unique abilities.

  • Are you
    • a preschool or school-age director looking to educate your staff on speech and language development and milestones?
    • a healthcare or medical professional, medical facility operator, or related fields looking to educate yourself or staff on speech and language disorders in children and/or adults?
    • law enforcement, first aid/emergency medical technician, or firefighter looking to add vital and possibly life-saving training in order to identify communication breakdowns and understand how to communicate effectively with children and adults with unique abilities?
    • another professional or corporate member looking to learn more about communicating with potential clients or associates who may have related speech and language difficulties and communication barriers?
Our professional development training will be customized and optimized for your working environment. Start making a difference in your community and professional workplace by learning more about speech and language disorders.

If interested, contact us for more information at info@littlesunshinetherapy.com

Start your child's speech and language therapy journey by clicking here to contact us for more information!


Learn More About Speech and Language Therapy

Language refers to the words we use and how we use them to communicate. Language is broken down into expressive and receptive language. Receptive language refers to a person’s ability to comprehend directions, questions, comments, and how well they maintain attention to tasks. Expressive language is how a child shares information such as ideas and feelings. This can be through spoken language or through other means of communication such as gestures, facial expressions, and picture symbols. A child may have difficulty in one or both areas of language.

Want to know the difference between speech and language?
https://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/speech-and-language/

Articulation is how a child produces individual sounds using his/her articulators (lips, teeth, tongue). An articulation disorder is when a child produces individual sounds incorrectly. A child’s error sounds may consist of substitutions or distortions of a single sound and treatment focuses on the individual speech sound in error. For example, a child may produce “wion” for “lion” and correct tongue and lip placement must be addressed in order to produce the correct sound.

Phonology refers to predictable, rule based errors that affect more than one sound in a child’s speech. A phonological disorder is when a child is not able to recognize the pattern in which sounds are put together in order to produce words. For example, fronting is a phonological process in which velar sounds, or “back sounds” (k/g) are replaced with sounds made at the front of our mouth (t/d). A child who presents with the process of fronting would say “tea” for “key” and “do” for “go.”

Treatment for a phonological disorder will look very different from an articulation disorder as individual sounds are not being worked on. The phonological processes that the child exhibits must be addressed. Children with phonological disorders may be much harder to understand than a child with an articulation disorder.

For more information on articulation and phonological disorders:
https://www.asha.org/Practice-Portal/Clinical-Topics/Articulation-and-Phonology/

Fluency Disorders are another type of speech disorder. Fluency disorders or “stuttering” is when a person’s speech is interrupted by sound or word repetitions, prolongations of sounds, audible/silent blocks, and/or interjections. Secondary characteristics such as facial grimaces or body tightening may be present during the stuttering moment. Direct and indirect approaches may be used depending on the child’s age and severity of disfluencies.

For more information:
https://www.stutteringhelp.org/

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a motor speech disorder in which a child’s brain has difficulty planning and coordinating complex oral movements needed to produce intelligible speech. Since CAS is a motor speech disorder, a motor-based therapy approach must be used.

Treatment:
  • Treatment should not focus on individual speech sounds.
  • Therapy targets are based on the sounds and syllables that a child has in his or her repertoire and not what he/she should have developmentally.
  • Therapy should focus on motor patterns between sounds, syllables, and words. Motor patterns will move from simple syllables(i.e. CV, CVC, CVCV) to more complex syllable shapes (i.e. CVCVCV)
  • In therapy, a child should be working at the word level in order to establish movement between each sound to formulate intelligible speech.
  • A verbal model of a word is not enough.
  • Multisensory approach to therapy should be used and faded to independent productions when appropriate.

Augmentative and Alternative Communication includes all modalities of communication and expression. This may include the use of picture symbols, communication boards, and/or speech generating devices in order for a child to successfully express themselves.

Phonological awareness refers to pre-reading skills, which children typically develop during their preschool years. These include skills where the child begins to understand that words are made up of individual sounds and those sounds can be manipulated and changed to create different words. During this time, children start to understand how different letters and sounds create the words that we speak, read, and write.

Phonological Awareness includes rhyming, alliteration, segmenting words into smaller units, combining separate sounds into words, and understanding that words are made up of sounds that are represented by written letters.

Many young children have difficulty during meal times. These difficulties may present in many ways, such as a limited food repertoire, difficulty trying new foods, gagging/vomiting when eating, avoidance to different textures, outright refusal to eat, and/or difficulty being able to sit still during meal times. Feeding challenges are often due to oral motor difficulties, sensory differences, and/or behavior.
Start your child's speech and language therapy journey by clicking here to contact us for more information!


F.A.Q.
Do We Accept Insurance?

  • At this time, we do not bill insurance companies directly or act as a participating provider for any insurance company. However, we can provide all the necessary paperwork for clients to submit to their insurance provider for potential reimbursement. Please note that this does not guarantee that your evaluation and/or therapy sessions will be covered by your health plan.

    Although we do not accept insurance at this time, we are a direct pay provider for the Family Empowerment Scholarship (formerly Gardiner). Want more information regarding the scholarship? Click here for more information.

Do you provide individual or group therapy sessions?

  • We provide individualized, one-on-one speech and language therapy sessions.

Where do you provide services?

  • We provide speech and language services in the comfort of your own home, as well as your child’s daycare, preschool, or private school. Teletherapy is also available via a secured online platform.

How do I get started?

  • In order to get started, contact us. You will receive a free, 15 minute phone consultation in order to determine if an evaluation is recommended. After the consultation, you will receive intake paperwork via email. Once the intake paperwork is submitted, an evaluation will be scheduled based on your availability as well as the therapist’s availability. If skilled intervention is recommended, the evaluator will prepare a plan of care to be discussed with parents/caregivers. The evaluator will also determine the frequency and duration of the session based off of the evaluation results.

    ** Although Little Sunshine Pediatric Therapy LLC is a private pay practice, we may require a referral from your child’s pediatrician. If required, please have the pediatrician email the referral to info@littlesunshinetherapy.com

How much will I be paying for services?

  • Please contact us to discuss evaluation fees and price per session. We do not charge a travel fee.

Start your child's speech and language therapy journey by clicking here to contact us for more information!


We strive to provide professional and exceptional service to all of our clients!

"Ms. Ashley is a phenomenal speech therapist! She worked tirelessly and tenaciously to help our child communicate. She truly loves working with children and is innovative, creative, and has a magical way of keeping them engaged while learning and practicing. Ms. Ashley collaborates with parents as a team to help the child succeed. When she sets goals, she far exceeds them and the results are incredible. Our child is now speaking clearly and on track with peers largely due to Ms. Ashley’s time, dedication and support. Naturally, we love our children and want what is best for them. Choosing the best support team is an invaluable gift."

"Ashley has been like a third parent to our son for the last three years. I was feeling overwhelmed and confused about how to help my son who at an early age struggled with speech. Ashley came to our home and made the speech evaluation fun for our son and then helped me understand what was going on and how she could help. Her plan was thoughtful and clearly communicated. She followed through with her plan and kept me up to speed with frequent updates. She is accessible and kind. Our son adores her and always looked forward to speech therapy. Ashley knows how to challenge but not overwhelm a child. As a parent I felt empowered and informed. Ashley was also able to help us transition between different teachers. She is an amazing advocate for our son. I recommend her without hesitation and feel fortunate to have found her."

Start your child's speech and language therapy journey by clicking here to contact us for more information!


Join Our Team at Little Sunshine Pediatric Therapy!
Little Sunshine Pediatric Therapy!
Now Hiring!

Are you a passionate Speech Therapist looking to make a difference in the lives of children? Little Sunshine Pediatric Therapy is currently seeking a part-time Speech Therapist with the potential for full-time hours to join our dynamic team.

  • Requirements:
    • ASHA CCC's (Certificate of Clinical Competence)
    • Florida State Licensure
    • Valid Driver's License
    • Professional Liability Insurance

If you meet the above requirements and are eager to contribute your expertise to our team, we want to hear from you!



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Little Sunshine Pediatric Therapy, LLC ©2023-2024
Specializing in Speech & Language Therapy
Servicing St. Petersburg, Fl and Surrounding Areas
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