Do you hear what I hear? At Play & Thrive Speech Therapy, it’s the joyful sounds of discovery, understanding, and laughter. The Anne Arundel County-based business reaches and teaches kids where they are with a neurodiverse-affirming, strength-based, play-based model of speech therapy.
A speech therapist with more than a decade of teaching experience, Play & Thrive Founder Anne Marie Flood first practiced in the school system. She found the setting challenging for helping different kinds of learners, learners like her own children who have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and who she homeschools.
Valuing a child-friendly “connection over compliance approach,” Flood launched her own practice in 2022, initially seeing just a handful of students via teletherapy. While helping those clients was rewarding, she soon received referrals for children who would benefit from in-person learning. She decided to open an office to house her rapidly-growing business.
“It was a scary prospect growing from a solo, part-time practice to a full-time business,” she says. “There has been fantastic growth.”
“Play & Thrive has become the local go-to for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC),” Flood says. AAC includes gesturing, sign language, pictures, and writing, as well as speech-generating devices and apps for children with spoken language difficulties.
By offering their own, accessible brand of speech therapy, Play & Thrive has gone from serving 25 students per week in 2022, to more than 200 clients a week, with a growing waitlist. Two full-time employees and one part-time employee offer care in three treatment rooms, not enough to keep up with demand.
That’s where BGE’s Energizing Business Grant makes its impact.
