Darlene Hanson, Facilitated Communication Master Trainer
Director of Communication Services, REACH SERVICES (Resource for Education, Advocacy, Communication, and Housing; formerly WAPADH)
Services: Speech and Language, AAC, FC evaluations and therapy, FC and Communication Partners training
Email: dghanson@mac.com
Phone: (562) 946-0467
Address: 9300 Santa Fe Springs Road, Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670
Darlene Hanson has her Masters of Arts in Communication Disorders from Whittier College in California. She is currently the Director of Communication Services with the non-profit REACH, in Southern California.
Darlene works with individuals, their support teams, and their families to build communication. Her professional experiences have included work in the public schools and private practice. As a speech and language pathologist Darlene conducts assessments in the areas of speech, language, and augmentative communication. She has been working with individuals with severe communication impairments since her under graduate program at Chapman College (1980).
Darlene has included Facilitated Communication Training in her assessments and practice since 1991. Over the course of the years she has taught at Chapman University, presented at local, state and national conferences, and conducted training on Autism, Augmentative Communication strategies, and Facilitated Communication Training throughout the United States. Through REACH, formerly known as WAPADH, Darlene has been instrumental in organizing multiple national conferences on Facilitated Communication known as the “West Coast Symposium.”
Darlene is also one of a group of Master Trainers for Facilitated Communication Training, and assisted with the writing of the Best Practice Standards for Facilitated Communication Training distributed through the Institute for Communication and Inclusion of Syracuse University. She is now a Board Member of the Wellsping Guild. Darlene has co-authored research and articles on communication for those with severe communication impairments, and is a co-author of Investigation of Authorship in Facilitated Communication, (Journal of Mental Retardation, Aug. 1996).