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WHITEVILLE — Speech Solutions, a regional business headquartered in Lumberton that offers speech pathology services, is opening an office in Whiteville on Thursday.

The office, which will be at 106 S. Lee St., will be staffed with two people, including Kim White, who has a master’s in education, is certified in clinical competence in speech language pathology, and is Speech Solution’s lead therapist in the Columbus County area. The telephone numbers for the Whiteville office will be 910-640-0856 and 910-640-0857.

The Whiteville office will be the third for Speech Solutions, which also has locations in Lumberton and Laurinburg. The business employs 33 full-time people in specialties ranging from articulation/language delays, fluency and voice disorders, hearing impairment, dysphagia and safe-swallowing techniques, apahsia, apraxia, dyarthria, oral motor deficits, augmentative communication, dementia and traumatic brain injury. The business offers free language and speech screenings.

Speech Solutions serves clients ages 2 to 102 in Columbus, Robeson, Scotland, Richmond, Moore, Cumberland, Bladen and Brunswick counties.

The Lumberton office, which is located at 4260 Fayetteville Road, can be reached at 910-671-9629 or 910-671-9630, and the Laurinburg office, which is at 714 Atkinson St., can be reached at 910-277-1588 or 910-277-1589.

The business was started in 2003 by Allison Harrington out of her Rowland home. Harrington, a graduate of The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, taught school for almost five years before earning her master’s degree in Speech Pathology at North Carolina Central and opening Speech Solutions.

Speech Solutions has already joined the Whiteville Chamber of Commerce, and is also a member of the chambers of commerce in Lumberton and Laurinburg.

“We are fortunate enough to have employees that are all born and raised in the community where they work and they all have a vested interest in the community as well as the patients they serve,” he said. “We enjoy each other and therefore working together to meet the speech and language needs of our community as well as working together to enhance our community is easy.”

Harrington’s parents, Ann and Frank Harrington, live in Rowland and work part-time at the business. Her son Seth designed the company logo for its T-shirts.

The company’s website is at www.speechsolutionsinc@hotmail.com.