Our history in St. Louis, MO
St. Mary’s Special School for Exceptional Children, Archdiocese of Saint Louis (legal title) was founded in 1952 to provide quality educational and residential services to children with development disabilities. Over the years, we have evolved to meet the changing and emerging needs of the children in our community who have disabilities. In 1966, a vocational program was created for the children as they became adolescents. We operated in this capacity for many years.
In 1990, we established our St. Mary’s Early Intervention and Preschool program to provide vital early childhood education and early intervention for children in north St. Louis City. Another expansion occurred in 1995 as we began serving children from North St. Louis County. With this expansion, we included typically developing children so that with or without disabilities could learn and play together.
This about the time that we became known simply as St. Mary’s Special Services. This acknowledged the broadening array of services provided such as individualized residential care, individualized therapy at children’s residences, center-based specialized therapies, child care, and early childhood education for children with and without disabilities in an inclusionary setting, vocational training for adolescents with developmental disabilities.
In 1998, St. Mary’s Special Services began providing inclusionary therapies to children. Early intervention therapies were provided in the home and center, inclusionary child care, and our vocation center.
With the help of the United Way’s Venture Grant in 2003, St. Mary’s began a preschool and early intervention program in South St. Louis County to meet the unmet needs in that area. In 2005, a site was purchased with the help of the Boeing Employee Fund and the Tilles Fund. Each contribution played an integral part in our expansion.
In 2018, St. Mary’s Special Services began providing speech and language therapy to students within the Federation of Catholic Schools of North County in pre-K through 2nd grade. In 2020, a second speech-language pathologist was added to provide services to more children and in 2021, a third SLP was added to provide speech and language evaluations and therapy to students of all ages in the Federation (pre-K through 8th grade).
Today in St. Louis, MO
Today, we serve over 200 students with individualized speech and language therapy in the student’s home schools. These 8 schools are located in North County. Speech and language services are provided based on a response to intervention model, which begins with a referral that immediately triggers a screening and support from the SLP. Based on an assessment, the SLP determines if more services are needed and to what level. The ability to begin providing support immediately to students most in need allows St Mary’s Special Services’ therapists to intervene as early and effectively as possible. Therapy includes support for articulation disorders, language disorders, autism spectrum disorders, executive function disorders/difficulties, and early reading markers related to language acquisition. The provision of early intervention in North County Catholic schools ensures that students receive the highest level of differentiated instruction in language, literacy, communication, and social skills to become successful learners and happy, holy children.