Campers flocked to the NIU Speech-Language Hearing Clinic for the inaugural Food and Friends camp held each Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon throughout June.
The Food and Friends camp was led by NIU speech-language pathology (SLP) graduate students Emily Cowman, Gracie Strohm, Bailey Rzewuski and Olivia Zimmermann who worked with campers in dedicated sensory exploration and group feeding time under the guidance of clinical assistant professor and speech-language pathology (SLP) program director, Anna Cannone, and NIU Health Sciences Ph.D. candidate, Katie Coakley.
Cannone and Coakley are trained in the Sequential Oral Sensory (SOS) Approach to Feeding, a transdisciplinary program to assess and treat children with feeding difficulties.
“The SOS approach is important for many reasons,” Cannone said. “The parents, graduate students, and campers all benefited immensely from integrating concepts from psychology, sensory integration and language development together to support the whole child.”
Cannone said the approach incorporates international foods and teaches children how to have a whole-body experience with diverse consistencies, tastes and textures.
“This approach not only teaches the child how to enjoy eating and communicate about it, but also instructs the parents on how to support the child in the home environment to further generalize progress,” Cannone said.
In addition to guiding the SLP grad students in that approach, the camp included an educational component for parents and an opportunity to connect with one another.
“Having children with feeding difficulties can be stressful, and parents often feel isolated without a supportive network,” Cannone said. “Feeding supports are not nearly as widely available as practitioners or families would like, which made this a unique opportunity for NIU’s Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic to offer.”
Cannone said based on the camper response and parental feedback, they hope to offer the camp again next year. 
“Katie and I are both very thankful for the CHHS SEED Research Funding grant which supported purchasing supplies needed for camp,” Cannone said. “It was a great clinical learning experience for our graduate students and a wonderful opportunity for our campers.”
Learn more about NIU Speech-Language Hearing Clinic.
