Telehealth services delivered by health practitioners and related personnel such as speech-language pathologists (SLPs) as we recognize them today have increased dramatically over the past three decades with the spread of broadband internet and associated information and communication technologies and platforms (though the history of telemedicine reaches back much earlier when one considers radio, satellite, telephone, and closed-circuit television as vehicles for connecting clients with practitioners). The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of telehealth and telepractice service delivery to help reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2, improve access to routine care for clients, and diminish reliance on finite resources. In this issue of Topics in Language Disorders, guest issue editor Sue Grogan-Johnson asked authors to present work that discusses uses of telepractice for addressing the communication and language learning needs of children by SLPs.

In the first article, Lowman and her colleagues provide a set of telepractice competencies to guide graduate programs in the preparation of SLPs. The competencies are clustered into one of three domains, including (a) regulatory, reimbursement, and ethics; (b) telecommunications technology; and (c) clinical telepractice. Examples of how the competencies were incorporated into graduate SLP preparation programs in Kentucky, Maine, and Ohio are described. The article gives the reader concrete definitions of many key terms and checklists to guide program evaluation of demonstrated competencies. In the second article, Kester offers a clinical tutorial to guide SLPs in conducting speech and language evaluations remotely. She presents clear guidelines for preparing for the conduct of remote evaluation, considering types of test items and assessment procedures and how they intersect with technology affordances and limitations, and addressing test reliability and validity concerns when assessment tools are used in nonstandard ways. Bolden and Grogan-Johnson describe in the next article a framework for language intervention by school-based SLPs in a telepractice context. The framework highlights the role of evidence-based intervention programs and practices, which typically include the core components of repeated opportunities for skill and knowledge acquisition, systematic scaffolding by the SLP, and explicit focus on curriculum-relevant skills and strategies. The authors argue that careful attention is warranted for intervention planning, adjusting the therapy context parameters, collaboration, specific intervention materials, and prompting because these are likely to differ most from traditional pediatric language intervention in a telepractice service delivery environment. In the fourth article, Krok and colleagues present research on a structured language elicitation protocol, the Sentence Diversity Priming Task, to assess sentence diversity in toddlers via video chat platforms. The task is presented as an animated picture book online, with parents serving as the child's primary communication partner during administration. Their research examines compliance in a group of typically developing toddlers and developmental associations between their sentence diversity task performance and vocabulary and grammatical complexity scores on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. Finally, Lundblom and her colleagues present the School Telepractice Assessment, which comprises aspirational questions to guide school-based SLPs, school administrators, and contracted service providers in their planning for and evaluation of telepractice service delivery in schools. The questions pertain to compliance with U.S. federal legislation, personnel policies, roles and responsibilities of school-based SLPs, privacy and security issues, and consent policies and program evaluation.

Telepractice is here to stay and likely will increase in frequency and scope as advances in technology unfold and there is greater demand for high-quality assessment and intervention services for populations that lack reliable access to more traditional in-person services due to location, age, and so forth. The authors in this issue of Topics in Language Disorders offer ample practical guidance and important considerations for clinicians who venture into this mode of service delivery, and we trust readers will find the information to be valuable.

-Gary A. Troia, PhD, CCC-SLP

-Sarah E. Wallace, PhD, CCC-SLP

Co-Editors