Increasing speech fluency has been a primary goal of stuttering treatment since our field was first established. However, this goal is anchored to a pervasive misperception that effective communication requires fluent speech, and the assumption that learning to speak fluently is a necessary step to improving quality of life.

Over the last two decades, the Blank Center has never targeted fluency as a measure of therapeutic change and has steadily built the evidence to support an alternative to the historically fluency centered approach to stuttering treatment that effectively targets Communication, Advocacy, Resiliency and Education (CARE) and empowers culturally and linguistically diverse persons who stutter of all ages to communicate effectively, speak confidently, and advocate meaningfully so that their daily lives and aspirations are not defined by whether or not they stutter when they speak.