situations. The career toward speech-language pathology was birthed, but it was not a straight forward journey. She was a biology major at Fairleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey, en route to becoming an otolaryngologist. While visiting her speech-language pathologist cousin, Mona decided to shadow her at work for a few days. Career-curious discussions with her ensued and Mona then realized conclusively that she wanted to diagnose, play an integral part in the intervention, the turnaround and provide help holistically and meaningfully to people who needed speech-language pathology remediation. But she was already three years into her biology program, it was difficult to change her major and the university she attended did not even offer speech-language pathology! That fire, however, was now lit, and fueled with determination, she found another university that offered the prerequisites for speech-language pathology and did an overwhelmingly taxing credit overload. It was difficult, but she persevered and succeeded. Her Master’ s Degree in Speech Language Pathology was thereafter obtained with distinction from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. In 2016 she then returned home to Antigua and opened her private practice.
CHATS is housed in what was once just a building with a wide-open hall. Mona’ s vision for a functional, therapeutic, accessible space was brought to life by Antiguan Interior Designer, Charmaine Werth. Visual, sensory, therapy and observation rooms were all expertly designed to cater to the needs of her clients. Observation rooms are both visual and audio so parents do not have to sit in therapy sessions with their children as this can sometimes be a distraction. But Mona likes them to see what is being done so they can continue the therapy at home, so the rooms are inviting, comfortable, practical and functional. Her building is also fully accessible.
The range of services offered by CHATS fills just a small portion of the speech-language pathology void on Antigua & Barbuda. Families come to her directly but referrals are also sent from schools, pediatricians in the hospitals and private clinics, the Special Needs unit of the Ministry of Education and also Social Services department will identify families in need and send them to her. There is a lot of people to be helped and with her being the only practice on the island, many are not able to receive her services directly, but she tries to assist as best she can. She would go into the classroom of her clients to see how the environment can be made more language-rich. She’ ll coach the teacher on ways to support the children and
Building before CHATS Antigua moved in
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CHATS Antigua After Mona ' s vision was