An SLPA administers. An SLPA never interprets. Interpretation means summarizing, integrating, and using data for clinical decision making, and it belongs to the SLP alone.

You may run a speech, language, hearing, developmental, or oral mechanism screening. You may not say what the result means, whether it is a pass or fail, whether a referral is needed, or whether the person qualifies for services.

• Identify as a speech-language pathology assistant — verbally, in writing, on signage, on name badges. Not aide, not advisor, not speech teacher.
• The client must be told they are receiving services from an SLPA under the supervision of an SLP.
• Misrepresentation is any false, erroneous, or misleading statement, including one you simply let stand.
• FERPA covers education records in schools. HIPAA covers health information in health care settings. PII is personally identifiable information.
• Records must be secured. Paper is allowed, electronic is allowed, ink is not required.
• Correct a paper error with a single line, the correction, your initials and the date. Never erase or white out.
• Setting matters as much as audience: the right person told in a hallway is still a breach.
• Liability insurance is your responsibility to obtain or verify, before you provide services.

• Documented direct supervision for each client at least every 30 to 60 days, depending on visit frequency and setting. The ASHA sample exam question states 60 days.
• Certification requires 100 hours of supervised clinical experience, a passing exam score, and state credentialing.
• A supervising SLP needs CCC-SLP or state credentials, 9 months of experience after certification, and 2 hours of professional development in supervision.
• One SLP should supervise no more than three FTE SLPAs. One SLPA should have no more than three supervising SLPs.
• Medically fragile clients require 100% direct supervision. Live telesupervision counts; a recording does not.
• Direct supervision is in-view observation or real-time telesupervision. Indirect supervision is records review, recorded session review, and conferences.
• Before you work independently, the SLP must have first contact with everyone on the caseload: rapport, baseline data, documentation.
• If the SLP cannot be reached by phone, pager, or electronic means, you may not perform tasks.
• Supervisor gone more than a week: inform the SLPA, notify the employer, tell clients services will be rescheduled.
• An SLPA never has their own caseload.

Identifying and complying

• Self-identify as an SLPA — verbally, in writing, on signage, on name badges.
• Comply with HIPAA, FERPA, reimbursement requirements, and state rules on SLPA education, training, and scope.

Screening and assessment

• Administer and score screenings — speech, language, hearing, developmental, oral mechanism — for the SLP to interpret.
• Assist during assessment: set up the testing environment, gather and prep materials, take notes as the SLP advises.
• Administer and score assessment tools, if you meet the examiner requirements in the manual AND the SLP verified your competence — never interpreting.
• Assist the SLP with interpretation and translation during screening and assessment, exclusive of interpreting results.

Treatment

• Implement documented care plans developed and directed by the SLP — IEP, IFSP, treatment plan.
• Provide direct therapy addressing goals the SLP developed: speech, language, voice, fluency, cognitive, pragmatic.
• Adjust and document the amount and type of support or scaffolding to facilitate progress.
• Modify an activity based on the observed physical, mental, or behavioral status of the client — then report it.
• Develop and implement activities and materials for teaching and practice, per the SLP plan.
• Use behavior management techniques.
• Deliver services through any model the SLP directs: individual, group, classroom-based, home-based, co-treatment.
• Provide telepractice to clients the SLP selects.

Documenting and communicating

• Document performance — collect data, calculate percentages, prepare charts, records, and graphs — and report it to the SLP in a timely way.
• Provide caregiver coaching: model and teach communication strategies, give feedback on caregiver-child interactions.
• Share objective information — accuracy, participation, response to treatment — with clients, families, and other providers, without interpretation or recommendations, as directed by the SLP.
• Report data and observations at a meeting when the SLP is present or has given prior approval.
• Sign formal documents when the SLP co-signs.

AAC

• Program AAC devices.
• Provide training and technical assistance to clients and families in using AAC devices.
• Develop low-tech AAC materials.

Feeding and swallowing — carrying out the plan only

• Demonstrate strategies included in the feeding and swallowing plan the SLP developed, and share that information with families, staff, and caregivers.
• Assist clients with feeding and swallowing skills as developed and directed by the SLP, including specified food textures and liquid consistencies.

Language and culture

• Interpret for clients and families when you have specialized training in interpreting skills in that language.
• Provide services in another language based on your own skills and knowledge of that language.
• Adjust your communication style to meet the needs of clients from different cultural groups.
• Provide information about the influence of a first language on second-language development, under the SLP direction.

Administration

• Clerical duties and site operations: scheduling, recordkeeping, maintaining inventory of supplies and equipment.
• Safety checks and maintenance of equipment.
• Prepare materials for screening, assessment, and treatment.

Prevention and advocacy

• Present primary prevention information to groups known to be at risk.
• Promote early identification and early intervention activities.
• Advocate through community awareness, health literacy, education, and training programs, including addressing social determinants of health.
• Provide information to emergency response agencies about people with communication or swallowing disorders.
• Advocate at local, state, and national levels for policy affecting access to services and research funding.
• Support the SLP in research projects, in-service training, marketing, and public relations.
• Participate actively in professional organizations.

• Represent yourself as an SLP.
• Interpret assessment tools to diagnose, or to determine eligibility or qualification.
• Administer or interpret feeding and swallowing screenings, checklists, or assessments. This is the exception to the screening rule.
• Diagnose any communication or feeding and swallowing disorder.
• Develop or determine feeding or swallowing strategies or precautions.
• Disclose clinical or confidential information to anyone the SLP has not approved.
• Write, develop, or modify a plan of care in any way.
• Make referrals for additional services.
• Work without access to supervision.
• Select AAC systems or devices. You may program them, train on them, and build low-tech materials.
• Treat medically fragile clients without 100% direct supervision.
• Perform vocal tract prosthesis shaping or fitting, or vocal tract imaging.
• Give input at a care conference without the SLP present or having given prior approval.
• Provide interpretive information about status or services to anyone.
• Sign or initial formal documents without the SLP co-signature.
• Discharge a client.
• Provide counseling or advice.

You follow the SLP-written plan for speech, language, voice, fluency, cognitive, and pragmatic goals. You may assist in designing activities, use behavior management, provide caregiver coaching, and deliver telepractice to clients the SLP selects.

You may modify an activity based on observed physical, mental, or behavioral status, and you may adjust and document the amount and type of scaffolding. You must then report the modification to the SLP.

You may not change goals, mastery criteria, specified protocol parameters such as cue type or delay length, the hierarchy level, service minutes, or the caseload.

• Record what is countable and observable: trials correct out of trials given, at what level of support.
• Write observations, not inferences. "The mother spoon-fed the child" is data. "The child cannot self-feed" is a conclusion.
• Progress monitoring is collecting, graphing, and reviewing data, then comparing growth against a target trend line to judge whether progress is sufficient. You do the collecting and graphing, and you may administer and score progress monitoring tools if you meet the examiner requirements and the SLP verified your competence. Judging whether progress is sufficient is interpretation, so it is the SLP.
• Expect at least one percentage calculation. 14/20 is 70%. 12/16 is 75%.

• Articulation is individual sound production. Phonology is patterns: fronting (tup/cup), stopping (tun/sun), gliding (wabbit/rabbit), cluster reduction (poon/spoon), final consonant deletion.
• Syntax is sentence structure, morphology is word forms and endings, semantics is meaning, pragmatics is social use.
• Receptive is comprehension. Expressive is production.
• Apraxia is motor planning: inconsistent production, disrupted coarticulation, atypical prosody. Dysarthria is motor execution: weakness and incoordination.
• A language delay follows the typical sequence more slowly. A language disorder shows an atypical pattern.
• The velum is the soft palate. Hard and soft palate separate oral from nasal cavity. The alveolar ridge sits behind the upper teeth. The larynx houses the vocal folds.
• Sensorineural loss comes from the inner ear or auditory nerve; the cochlea is the classic answer. Conductive loss comes from the outer or middle ear.
• Intelligibility to unfamiliar listeners: roughly half at 2 years, most of the time by 4 years. First words about 12 months, two-word combinations about 24 months.
• AAC: aided uses external tools, unaided uses only the body. Low-tech needs no power and is your backup when a device fails. Operational competence drives programming.
• Coughing or a wet vocal quality during eating is reported promptly. Never change food textures yourself.

• Positive reinforcement adds something desirable. Negative reinforcement removes something aversive. Extinction withholds reinforcement.
• Shaping reinforces successive approximations. Chaining links steps. A token economy exchanges tokens for a backup reinforcer.
• Articulation hierarchy: isolation, syllable, word, phrase, sentence, conversation.
• Cueing hierarchy from most to least support: hand-over-hand, model, verbal cue, independent. Fading reduces support.
• Generalization is carryover to new contexts. Community-based instruction and incidental teaching support it; discrete trial training does not on its own.
• Acoustic highlighting uses increased pitch, emphasis, and decreased rate for students with hearing loss.
• A visual schedule beats a verbal warning for transition difficulty, especially with autism.

• You may identify the need for translation or interpretation and help use those services.
• You may interpret only with specialized training in interpreting skills in that language. Fluency alone is not enough.
• Never use an untrained bystander, family member, or staff member as an interpreter.
• A dialect or second-language pattern is a difference, not a disorder, and is never a therapy target.
• Bilingual exposure does not cause language disorders.
• Cultural and linguistic backgrounds exist on a continuum; not everyone fits one group.

• The ASHA Code of Ethics applies to members, CCC holders, applicants, and Clinical Fellows. That is the SLP code.
• The ASHA Assistants Code of Conduct applies to certified assistants and applicants. That is your code. Its three principles: responsibility to persons served professionally, responsibility for professional relationships, and responsibility to the public.
• If you violate the Assistants Code of Conduct, your supervising SLP may be found in violation of the Code of Ethics for inadequate oversight.
• The Scope of Practice does not supersede federal regulation or state credentialing law.
• A directive from your supervisor never expands your scope.
• Tasks delegated by other staff without SLP approval are a named misuse of SLPA services.

• Materials: you build them, the SLP decides the clinical content. Same for home programs.
• Scheduling: yours, including rescheduling calls. IEP service minutes are not.
• Records: create and maintain charts. Never sign or alter another clinician documentation; flag gaps.
• Equipment: routine documented checks and maintenance. A biological listening check means listening to each frequency and channel yourself. Broken equipment comes out of service.
• Supplies: maintain inventory, rotate stock, reorder before running out. Expendable is consumed and replaced; durable is equipment.
• Safety and infection control: routine, not reactive. Hand hygiene is the single most effective measure. Check for allergens before exposure.
• Supporting supervision: keep the logs. Supervision itself stays with the SLP.
• Outreach: staff the booth, hand out approved materials. Scope does not loosen at a health fair.

• Share general awareness and prevention information. General is fine; individual conclusions are not.
• Promote early identification and early intervention activities.
• Advocate on difference versus disorder, cultural beliefs, and accent modification.
• Inform emergency responders about communication supports — strategies, not diagnoses or records. For someone deaf or hard of hearing, written communication is the immediately available strategy; a louder voice is not.
• Advocate at local, state, and national levels for access to services and research funding, including addressing social determinants of health.
• Support the SLP in research, in-service training, marketing, and public relations.

• HB25-1075 was signed 5 May 2025 and took effect 6 August 2025. It regulates SLPAs and protects the title. It sunsets 1 September 2033.
• Degree: Colorado requires a bachelor degree or higher in speech-language pathology or communication disorders and speech sciences, or any field including at least 24 semester hours of relevant coursework. This is stricter than ASHA, whose first pathway allows an associate degree.
• Title protection: only people meeting the statutory requirements, or school SLPAs authorized by the Colorado Department of Education, may use the SLPA title.
• The law regulates practice and title rather than creating a traditional license. Supervising SLPs can be disciplined for inadequate oversight.
• SLPAs may not diagnose or prepare treatment plans — same as ASHA.

Working in schools is a separate CDE authorization:

• A minimum 100 clock-hour school-based practicum under an ASHA-certified, fully licensed school SLP.
• Government-issued ID, official transcripts from every institution, and fingerprints to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
• Renewal takes 50 clock hours (3.4 semester hours) of related professional development.
• Supervision for an authorized SLPA in a district over 90 days working 35 hours a week: 3.5 hours direct plus 3.5 hours indirect each week.
• An SLPA student or someone on an emergency authorization needs 50% direct supervision.
• CDE guidance recommends a supervising SLP have 3 years of experience. ASHA sets the minimum at 9 months post-certification.