After working more than four decades in Georgia’s public schools, licensed speech therapist Kay Jones thought she had retired for good. Instead, she found herself starting over — but this time on her own terms.
Jones is the founder of Lake Oconee Speech Therapy (LOST), which opened Nov. 1 last year at Harmony Crossing, near Lake Oconee, and held a well-attended, official ribbon-cutting last Friday, hosted by the Eatonton-Putnam Chamber of Commerce.
A licensed and certified speech-language pathologist, Jones brings 41 years of experience to a community that previously had few nearby clinic-based speech therapy options.
Jones earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Georgia — making her, as she puts it, "a proud Double Dawg.” She then spent decades working in school systems across the state before finishing her school career at Lake Oconee Academy, where Jones served for 10 years.
“I just felt like it was time to step away from the schools. There’s just so much going on there right now. I wanted to focus on the therapy itself,” she said, referring to annually more onerous, mandated paperwork.
When Jones decided to open her own practice, the response was immediate, enthusiastic, and even a little surprising, she admitted.
“As soon as I got my business license, I had patients that wanted to come,” she said.
Lake Oconee Speech Therapy primarily focuses on children with language and articulation challenges. Jones said she frequently works with patients who struggle to develop a vocabulary, form sentences, or pronounce certain sounds correctly. She also treats stuttering and certain voice disorders, though most of her current caseload consists of very young children.
“What I’m seeing a lot of right now are two- and three-year-olds who don’t have a lot of language skills,” she said. “Some aren’t talking, some aren’t babbling the way they should.”
Although she originally planned to serve children 3 and older, referrals for younger toddlers quickly followed.
“They really need the therapy,” Jones said. “So right now I’m doing from two up, but mostly children.”
In addition to seeing patients at her office, Jones partners LOST with nearby Little Scholars Academy, where she screens students and provides therapy during school days. The arrangement offers convenience for working parents who might otherwise face long drives to Athens or Macon for 30-minute speech therapy appointments.
Jones works three days a week — Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays — often starting before school and continuing into late afternoon to accommodate families’ schedules.
“I really just base my hours on what the parents need,” she said. “If I can accommodate them, I do.”
One of the biggest advantages of private practice, Jones acknowledged, is the ability to provide one-on-one attention, compared with therapy sessions often conducted in groups in public schools.
“Sometimes I really had a lot of kids,” Jones said. “And rarely did I get to work with them individually.”
Now, each 30-minute LOST session is devoted to each child’s unique needs and goals.
“I’m finding that my kids make a lot more progress when they’re in individual therapy, so I can devote that whole session to them,” she said.
She can also focus on communicating with families, often texting parents a summary after each session and offering speech exercises to practice at home.
“I provide quality therapy, and I’m really active with the parents,” Jones stressed. “That’s where the real progress happens.”
For Jones, the new practice is both a continuation and a renewal — a chance to keep doing the work she loves while serving families closer to home.
Lake Oconee Speech Therapy is located at 951 Harmony Rd., Ste. 103, Eatonton, where Jones can be reached at 912-253-0215.