Chantal Desmarais and Véronique Caron receive the OOAQ’s Innovation sociale-Desjardins 2023 award

The Ordre des orthophonistes et audiologistes du Québec (OOAQ) awarded this year’s Prix Innovation sociale-Desjardins to speech therapists Chantal Desmarais and Véronique Caron for their ESCALADE intervention program, aimed at supporting adolescents with developmental language disorders (DLD). Under the responsibility of Cirris researcher Pre Desmarais, the Université Laval research team and its partners in the education and health and social services networks designed the program in response to a critical lack of resources in the field. The ESCALADE program helps teenagers with LD to gain self-awareness and master strategies to develop better communication skills.

The ESCALADE program is designed to meet the needs of two main groups: junior high school students with developmental language disorders (DLD), for whom few services are currently available, and school practitioners who welcome and accompany these young people, and who report a lack of tools to support them in their progress towards better communication skills.

The program includes 17 turnkey activities for use in the classroom, and 5 main tools: a facilitator’s guide, a student workbook, support and training videos for facilitators, posters featuring the program’s key visuals, and PDFs of the training capsules. All this material can be viewed and downloaded free of charge here.

Congratulations to the whole team!