Mayo Teen creates an award winning app in response to massive Speech and Language Therapy waiting times for children

Dana, a first-year student in Mount St Michael Secondary School, Claremorris, created her app designed to provide vital assistance to parents of young children placed on waiting lists and unable to access vital SLT services at the most critical stages of their development. Most recent studies show over 15,000 children have been waiting well over a year for speech and language assessment in Ireland.

Dana noted in her research that “Many children do not receive the resources they need within a reasonable amount of time, meaning they are not able to communicate their needs or interact with their peers causing them to have extremely low self-esteem which can last into adulthood. It can also cause huge anxieties for their parents.”.

Dana developed her app during after-school sessions with Teen Turn, an organisation that provides teen girls with the opportunity to gain hands-on STEM experience. Working weekly with lead mentors in person as well as with online industry mentors, Dana worked on her app from ideation through to design, build and testing, as well as marketing and business planning. The Talk Time app has several features for both parents to use with their children and for speech and language therapists to send to individuals to work on between sessions.

Features include pronunciation exercises, animated illustrations on sound production, exercises, games and videos for children to follow. On working with Teen Turn, Dana says “Getting the chance to work with Teen Turn mentors was absolutely amazing. They helped me ideate my solution and create a workable Gantt chart to keep me focused on the stages of development I needed for both my app and my business plan. I am so grateful to Iseult and Ms Hogan for all the support and encouragement.”

Dana is not finished yet, as well as plans to release her app into the Google Play store and Apple Ppp Store Dana would also like to integrate an AI teachable machine feature into her app to help children with their pronunciation! We look forward to seeing this app on our phones in the not-too-distant future!