Our Mission

The Speech and Stuttering Institute is a non-profit organization in Toronto, offering speech therapy to children and adults with speech and stuttering challenges. Our speech therapy programs are made possible through the generosity of donors as well as client fees.

Our mission is three-fold:

• To provide excellent clinical service • To educate and train professionals throughout the province, and • To engage in cutting edge research to unearth the root causes of speech related challenges to find the most effective treatment methods.

For more information, contact Kevin Kozak at dev@speechandstuttering.com

About Our Charity.

SSI is a leader in service delivery, education, and research, and provides a vital service for hundreds of people each year. We are pioneers of excellence, inclusion, and equity in speech therapy.

Our Clinical Programs offer high-quality speech and stuttering therapy delivered by experienced clinicians each of whom focuses on SSI’s specific areas of speech and language difficulties. Our programs facilitate inclusion and equity by offering subsidies to our clients with a demonstrated financial need, thereby ensuring clients and families with lesser financial means can access the opportunity to become successful communicators.

What sets us apart?

• Financial Accessibility: We have never turned away an individual in need of therapy because of finances. Families who demonstrate financial need and cannot afford our services are provided with subsidies.
• Evidence-based Therapy: Our treatment approach is founded upon almost 4 decades of clinical experience and research in the areas of motor speech/speech sound disorders and stuttering. Our approach to treatment has been recognized worldwide and published in scientific journals and textbooks.
• Training and Advocacy: The government has recognized The Speech & Stuttering Institute as a Centre for Training & Development and have commissioned us to develop evidence-based care pathways for professionals in the Preschool Speech and Language Services Program. We train our colleagues across Ontario to apply the principles of these care pathways, thus ensuring the highest quality of care to children and their families in this program.
• Unique Intensive Stuttering Program in the GTA The stuttering program is the only specialized and intensive treatment program for stuttering in the greater Toronto area and one of only a handful of such treatment centres worldwide.

What is our impact?

Individuals with speech or stuttering problems are affected throughout their life, socially, educationally, vocationally and emotionally. Here at SSI we are able to transform the lives of preschoolers, school aged children, teens and adults who seek our services for their often devastating problems with communication. Clients who have gone through our programs have seen life changing results and dramatic changes resulting in better overall health and quality of life at home, school, and within their community. Despite the fact that 1 in 10 Canadians have a speech, language or hearing problem or that 11% of children in kindergarten have a speech sound disorder, our cause is still relatively unknown and unsupported.

This is the experience of a young woman who was treated at SSI as a teen and gained the speech skills and confidence to follow her dreams and is now a nurse at Sickkids: “The Speech & Stuttering Institute has had an amazing impact on my life. I have a stutter, and for most of my life this meant I could never trust that I would be able to say what I wanted say, causing immense anxiety for me when it came to speaking. Thankfully, I completed the Intensive Fluency Treatment Program at The Speech and Stuttering Institute. The program taught me reliable techniques to improve my speech, and after a lot of practice and support during and after the program I am finally able to speak fluently!”