Since they opened MoJo Speech Therapy last year, Morgan Cadena and Joni Kouba have experienced the demand for their skills. They opened the practice out of a desire to make a difference in the lives of children and adults through communication.
They began seeing patients in the spring of 2021. The age range is currently 1 to 70. Kouba said she has a couple of stroke patients. They point out that the name is not based on Permian High School, but a combination of the first two letters of each of their names.
Both former Ector County ISD speech therapists, Cadena and Kouba had talked to their respective husbands about opening a practice. Their husbands agreed that they should. One day, Cadena said they told each other about the conversations, met for coffee and began hashing it out.
“Literally probably within a month we were like okay, we’re doing this. We’re doing this. We’re really doing this. Sometimes we still stand in the kitchen and look at each other go we own this,” Kouba said.
She added that it is not something that makes a lot of money.
“It’s one of those things that you do because you love children and adults and you want to make a difference in lives with communication,” Kouba said. She added that they probably see about 44 patients a week total.
Kouba worked for Ector County ISD for 18 years and Cadena for 11.
Kouba is from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. She earned her bachelor’s in communication disorders and master’s in speech language pathology from Minot State University. She had gone to university in Canada for a little bit before moving to the U.S.
She and her husband, Todd Robinson, have four children and three grandchildren.
Cadena grew up in Big Lake. She earned her bachelor’s degree in communication sciences from Texas Tech University and a master’s in speech language pathology from Texas Woman’s University.
She and her husband, David, have four children.
Kouba said they see a range of disabilities such as autism, feeding, articulation, language, aphasia, stuttering and swallowing.
“We’ve got it all here. Keeps our day interesting,” Kouba said.
Sometimes it’s a little chaotic when clients arrive.
“… Coming into that, (for) some of our kids who are very easily overwhelmed it is kind of scary. My room actually next door doesn’t even have this bright of lights. It’s very low and I talk very quiet and sometimes we start with some familiar music like a nursery rhyme song just to kind of help bring them back down. Those are my nonverbal, very young ones. Those are the ones that most of the time are on my caseload. … If I just went in there and chatter, chatter, chatter the entire time at them, it would be counter productive. We would build no trust and rapport. They wouldn’t learn anything and they would probably, honestly, get tired of the sound of my voice,” Cadena said.
She added that the majority of MoJo Speech Therapy caseload is children on the autism spectrum, but some are speech delayed. Children have to be diagnosed by a doctor for autism.
“We cannot diagnose. I can say I see signs and symptoms consistent with, I see red flags for, I think you should talk to your doctor about. But as far as autism,” Cadena said, she cannot diagnose it.
Kouba said they sometimes get clients referred to them from a pediatrician who is concerned about speech delays and sometimes it’s a concerned parent, but they have to be referred back to their pediatrician.
Cadena said first words are supposed to emerge around 12 months. Generally, you like to see 100 to 200 words by 2 years old and that includes small words like in, out and more.
On speech delays, Cadena said she thinks COVID had a lot to do with the condition because children were home more and not getting out of the house as much.
“They’re losing all a lot of facial expressions (because of) masks,” she added.
There’s also more screen time.
“… A little bit of TV is not a bad thing. But when it’s the only … way that the child is learning any language, that’s when we see a lot more speech delays,” Cadena said. “The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than two hours a day of any screen time includes phones, tablets, computers (and) TVs.”
Cadena said opening the practice wasn’t a business move. It was more because it was something they enjoyed.
“… We can be our own bosses and do what we love to do, and we can help alleviate a very big need around here, which is provide at least one more clinic’s worth of speech therapy,” Cadena said.
Kouba and Cadena said Permian Basin Rehabilitation Center and West Texas Speech Therapy offer speech therapy. ECISD has early childhood intervention and there are couple of home health care services that can provide the service when they have an in-home speech therapist available.
Both acknowledge that there is a strong demand for speech therapists. Cadena noted that there is no school to home grow them. The two also said it is hard to get into graduate school for speech therapy.
“From time to time I get to talk to someone from UT and I always tell them we need a speech therapy program. The closest ones are in Abilene and in Lubbock. It is hard to draw people out here because unless you have family here and you have roots here already and you decide from those roots, I’m going to be a speech therapist and then come back then it is hard to find enough speech therapists around here. Because to draw someone into this area when they’re from Houston, Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth area, San Antonio area, they come here the cost of living is huge. It’s not very pretty. They have their six hours from their family. It’s hard to keep them here. We really need a program to help us grow our own speech therapists,” Cadena said.
