RiteCare

Sam Benon apologized for the pauses and tightness in his voice barely a minute into our conversation about how The RiteCare Childhood Language Center of Santa Barbara changed his young daughter’s life over the last two-plus years. 

“I get a little emotional because after struggling for so long, the growth we’ve seen with her has been tremendous,” he said. “We would not have had that level of success without RiteCare. I always get choked up.” 

Isla Benon was born in 2019, “A true COVID baby,” her dad said. “Pretty quickly, we suspected that there might be some kind of speech delay. But it was hard to get the right kind of help.” 

The family brought her to a doctor, who referred them to Tri-Counties Regional Center, but it wasn’t working out. 

“She was at a preschool and she was having a lot of issues communicating,” Benon said. 

Montessori didn’t work out either. It wasn’t until they tried The Oaks Parent-Child Workshop that they began to get effective help.

“The community opened our eyes to the support that we were looking for,” Benon said. 

Most importantly, one of the families mentioned RiteCare as an avenue for speech services, recommending the organization’s Camp Chit Chat, a summer program that is often an entry point as well as a continuation for toddlers with speech and language delays, whose struggles to express themselves can lead to frustration and exacerbate behavioral and social difficulties as they get older. 

Chit Chat is a fun and socially interactive camp to support young children in keeping up with essential communication skills, placing them in small groups of two-to-three with same-aged peers who are also working on similar skills including articulation, language, fluency and social communication. 

“We found out about it the day of the signup deadline, frantically submitted our application, and somehow she got in,” Benon said. “It was amazing.” 

Once fall arrived, Isla started one-to-one treatment with Speech-Language Pathologist and RiteCare Center Director Julie DeAngelis, who quickly recognized that the assessment the young girl had received from the school district might be missing something. DeAngelis conducted the more thorough CELF assessment and uncovered that Isla had a receptivity delay that was a deeper cause of her issues. 

“We didn’t understand before why Isla wasn’t processing,” Benon said. “We’d talk to her, but she often didn’t respond at all or in a way that made sense. Getting that assessment allowed us to understand how to take her out of a highly stimulating environment to make sure that she’s hearing and processing what is being said so she can respond appropriately to instructions or questions. If we didn’t have that, we would’ve been treating a problem that wasn’t the bigger issue.”

But over the course of Isla’s first year working with DeAngelis and RiteCare, the Benons saw a natural progression in Isla’s ability to respond and formulate sentences. Perhaps even more important, she began connecting more to other children that she’d previously avoided. 

“Once she started to find the words through RiteCare, the whole world of language just opened up like an explosion for her,” Benon said, once again with a catch in his voice. 

Part of the RiteCare program’s success, he said, is the involvement of parents, something not available in most other environments. Parents can not only listen in on the treatment sessions but also are participants in the homework assignments to help their child continue to develop and grow. 

“I’m learning from it too,” Benon said. “This thing called whole body listening is just a mind-blowing tool set. I’m using a lot of the techniques in my own life.”

Isla aged out of the RiteCare program after Camp Chit Chat this past summer, as well as The Oak Parent-Child Workshop. Evidence of her growth came at the latter’s graduation event. 

“Isla gave an impromptu speech where she said so succinctly and clearly that everybody was moving on, some going to new schools with friends and others by themselves,” Benon said. “Then she said, ‘But together we are brave, we are strong.’ Everyone was excited to see how far she’d come. It was a wonderful closure to her preschool career and transition into kindergarten at Santa Barbara Charter School.”

But Benon himself is still involved with the nonprofit as a board member, where his duties often consist of enthusiastically paying forward the introduction his family received at The Oaks. 

“My wife Lauren and I have referred at least half a dozen families to the program,” he said. “We talk about it nonstop. The fact that it’s free just blows my mind. So when they asked me if I’d be interested in the board, I said sure. I tell everyone under the sun about the program anyway. If I see a child having similar challenges that Isla went through, I suggest they look into RiteCare. There’s no shame, only understanding. The more that parents can look outward and realize that there’s a world of opportunities and possibilities and services out there, the better. I can’t say enough good things about RiteCare and how they changed our lives.”