Damara Weisshar, M.S. CCC-SLP is a licensed and certified Speech and Language Pathologist in the state of California.  She has always held an interest and passion for helping others communicate. While attending her undergraduate program at UCSB, she worked as a behavior therapist in a residential group home with Autistic teenagers. After receiving her Bachelors degree in Psychology from UCSB, she spent 3 years as a behavior therapist for autistic children before realizing that her favorite part of the job was helping children communicate to the best of their abilities.  She decided to change her career focus to the field of Speech and Language Therapy where she continued working as a behavior therapist while receiving a graduate degree in Communicative Sciences and Disorders from Cal State East Bay.

Damara loves to learn and regularly attends continuing education courses to enhance her skills as a speech therapist and to gain information on the most recent research and developments in the world of speech and language therapy.

Through evidence-based intervention along with family involvement, Small Talk Speech Therapy combines motivating and natural, play-based approaches to assist in speech and language development. We diagnose and treat the following:

• articulation disorders
• orofacial myofunctional disorders
• phonological disorders
• childhood apraxia of speech
• receptive and expressive language disorders
• fluency disorders
• social skills and pragmatic disorders

PROMPT Therapy (Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets) and an array of oral motor techniques for speech development are offered to increase precision of speech production.

Each child is unique, which is why Damara tailors each session to the child’s individual needs and adjusts therapy goals to maximize the child’s potential. Therapy is meant to be enjoyable and a positive learning experience for both the child and their families.

In her spare time, Damara enjoys hiking, working out, going to the beach, cooking, and spending time with her husband, two children, and her dog, Zeke!