How to Write Excellent Speech Therapy Goals With Examples

How do you write excellent speech therapy goals?

This article covers how to write goals that make sense for your patient, matter to them—and will be covered by their insurance company!

Plus, you’ll get dozens of sample speech therapy goals. Download the Mini Goal Bank for more goal-writing help!

What Makes A Speech Therapy Goal Excellent?

1. Appropriate and relevant, given each patient’s unique situation
2. Insurance/payer friendly (as needed)
3. Person-centered
4. Specific and measurable
5. Within an appropriate time frame
6. The right level of challenge

1. How To Make Goals Appropriate & Relevant

How do you write goals that are appropriate and relevant for each patient?

Start by reviewing their speech therapy assessment. Look for:

• The greatest weaknesses
• The greatest impacts on daily life
• The patient’s top goals
• The patient’s other preferences, desires, and needs

If you’re struggling to decide what goal areas to work on, ask yourself: What is the biggest factor impacting this patient’s safety, quality of life, and independence?

In speech therapy, this is often avoiding aspiration, improving independence, and communicating basic wants and needs.

2. How To Write Person-Centered Goals

Make your goals person-centered by interviewing the patient and their care partners. Ask and listen to what they want and need, and prioritize these when writing their goals.

3. How To Make Goals Specific, Measurable, & Insurance-Friendly

Make your goals specific and measurable to track progress within each speech therapy session and across sessions.

Also, use language that makes it clear that your patient needs a skilled speech-language pathologist.

This is really important to get your services paid for by insurance companies and other payment providers. They need to know that you’re using your speech therapy skills to help your patient improve.

Below are tips and examples for how to make goals specific and measurable.

Measure Only One Issue Per Goal

For example, your patient with dysphagia is at risk for aspiration due to reduced hyolaryngeal movement. But they’re also at risk for weight loss due to a slow eating pace.

Write one goal to increase hyolaryngeal movement. Then a separate goal to increase the speediness of meals.

Include Accuracy level

To make your goals specific and measurable, include an accuracy level.

This is often around 80% accuracy. Below 65% accuracy borders on chance levels for some goals. While above 95% gets into mastery territory, which often isn’t the goal of speech therapy.

That said, there are many exceptions, especially when it comes to safety. Do what’s best for your patient.

Include Cueing

Make goals measurable by including what skilled cueing (aka help) the patient will need to do the goal.

Include how much, what type, and how frequently you will cue them to help them succeed at the task.

Cueing can be measured in frequency (rare, occasional, frequent), type (visual, verbal, tactile), and % of the time help is needed (maximal = 75% of the time or more, moderate = 25-75% of the time, minimal = 25% of the time or less).

Remember to be consistent with how you measure cues for each goal.

Types of Cueing

Here are some of the skilled cues to add to your speech therapy goals:

4. How To Make Goals Within An Appropriate Time Frame

Many insurance companies require that you add a time frame of when each goal will be reached.  

Long-term goals are functional goals you believe the patient can achieve by discharge from therapy. While short-term goals are stepping-stone goals that will help them achieve their long-term goals.

The time frame for short-term goals is typically around 2 weeks or by the next progress report period.

5. How to Make Goals The Right Level of Challenge

There are many possible routes to consider when helping patients climb toward their goals.

Let’s say that your patient performs at goal level for 3 sessions in a row. First of all, congrats—you’re an awesome therapist! It’s time to progress the goal forward.

Or maybe they’re not making much progress, despite a solid effort. No worries, you’re still amazing. Let’s dial the goal back a bit.

Here are common signs that it may be time to modify your goal. Your patient is:

• Meeting their goal
• Improving rapidly
• Making very little to no change
• Getting worse
• Frustrated with or unmotivated by therapy

How To Modify Dysphagia Goals

* See 21 Practical Cognitive Tasks for improved attention, memory, and problem-solving.

How to Vary Visual Neglect Goals

Sample Speech Therapy Goals

Here are some example speech therapy goals!

Feel free to copy them for your personal use. Or download the Mini Goal Bank PDF (with 10 bonus goals plus a goal-writing guide).

Be sure to modify the goals to be excellent for each patient.

Example Dysphagia Goals

1. The patient will safely consume 8-ounce sequential cup sips of thin liquids without overt signs or symptoms of aspiration in 100% of opportunities given occasional verbal cues to utilize safe swallowing strategies.

2. The patient will initiate swallow within 3 seconds given single-cup sips of honey-thick liquids given moderate verbal cues in order to increase oral phase timeliness and reduce risk for aspiration.

3. The patient will safely consume an entire regular texture meal within 30 minutes given 5 or fewer cues to utilize safe swallowing strategies in order to increase speed of meals and reduce risk of weight loss.

4. The patient will complete lingual strengthening exercises (e.g. lateral tongue press with resistance) x30 independently in order to increase muscle strength to reduce oral residue given regular textures.

5. The patient will demonstrate appropriate mastication in 4/5 trials of dysphagia mechanical textures given maximal verbal and maximal tactile cues in order to reduce the risk for aspiration.

Example Aphasia Goals

1. The patient will answer abstract yes/no questions (e.g. “are there 20 hours in one day?”) at 80% accuracy given moderate verbal cues in order to increase ability to communicate with family members accurately.

2. The patient will write sentences in response to verbal prompts with 80% accuracy given minimal written cues.

3. The patient will point to appropriate photos on a simple AAC system at 70% accuracy given verbal prompts in order to communicate basic wants and needs.

4. The patient will reduce response time to 10 seconds or less in response to simple open-ended responses given x1 repetition in order to increase ability to communicate with rehab team.

5. The patient will read paragraph-level information then answer questions about the material at 90% accuracy given minimal visual cues in order to increase ability to read functional material.

Example Motor Speech Goals

1. The patient will produce /h/ initial syllables at 70% accuracy given maximal articulatory placement and maximal visual cues in order to increase ability to communicate verbally.

2. The patient will repeat “r” medial multisyllabic words in sentences at 90% accuracy given occasional minimal verbal cues in order to increase ability to communicate complex wants and desires.

3. The patient will read single velar final words at 80% accuracy given minimal phonetic placement cues in order to increase ability to communicate basic wants and needs.

4. The patient will produce 5 or more words per breath group given moderate verbal and minimal modeling cues to utilize breath support strategies.

5. The patient will increase prolonged “ah” to 16 seconds or longer in 4/5 trials independently in order to increase breath support to produce functional sentences.

Example Cognition Goals

1. The patient will complete a complex word search puzzle within 15 minutes given occasional minimal visual cues in order to increase sustained attention abilities.

2. The patient will be 100% oriented to temporal concepts (e.g. time, date) given moderate verbal cues to utilize visual aids.

3. The patient will fill out a pillbox at 100% accuracy given 5 medications and minimal verbal cues.

4. The patient will recall and complete steps to listen to a voice message at 80% accuracy given minimal visual cues.

5. The patient will listen to multiple paragraph-level information and recall details at 90% accuracy given minimal repetition in order to increase auditory memory ability.

Example Visual Neglect Goals

1. The patient will read page-level information from a novel at 100% accuracy given occasional minimal verbal cues to utilize finger scanning technique to attend to left-most side of page.

2. The patient will complete a simple maze in 10 minutes or less given minimal verbal cues and moderate visual cues to utilize compensatory strategies in order to increase attention to the left side.

3. The patient will eat 100% of the food on her plate given occasional cues to attend to the left.

New To Adult Speech Therapy?

If you’re new to adult speech therapy, we made The Adult Speech Therapy Roadmap Course for you!