JCPSLP Vol 22 No 1 2020

There are ample challenges for SLPs endeavouring to meet the needs of Aboriginal clients in the NT. For example, the use of standardised testing with Aboriginal clients is discouraged, for very valid reasons including lack of culturally appropriate normative data, yet SLPs working in schools and health systems require test scores and diagnoses to qualify a client for funding and service access. This leaves clinicians in a stalemate. Asking SLPs to do work such as “establish community-specific normative data” (Armstrong, Carmody et al., 2019, p. 53) is not realistic in the NT context of linguistic diversity, complexity and language change. Our collaborative partnerships must include recognition of Aboriginal ownership over Aboriginal knowledges and languages. We are responsible for “listening carefully to community needs, wants and ambitions when planning and conducting research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples” (SPA, 2019) and this may or may not include establishing normative language data for the purposes of language assessment. Given the context, we need to shift the focus away from expecting individual clinicians to do unrealistic work. What results is clinicians who know they aren’t doing the right thing but are unsure what the “right thing” is, nor how to improve their practice in the circumstances they find themselves. This situation risks making SLPs less likely to engage in frank and reflective conversations about their work. The impact of focusing solutions on individual clinicians creating appropriate protocols and normative data about languages spoken by Aboriginal people prevents us from moving forward as a profession because, in the NT context, moving forward as a profession requires teamwork. In this article, we describe three interdisciplinary projects which demonstrate collaborative processes for culturally responsive work with Aboriginal community partners. Note that this is not work being done by fulltime clinical practitioners, but in interdisciplinary, intercultural collaborations. Talking Culture Talking Culture is a resource developed by Northern Territory Department of Health for use with Aboriginal children and their families. One of the authors of this paper, Tanya Wright (an SLP), was hired to work with community members to create the resource, including health promotion strategies and activities, an informal language assessment and an informal speech assessment. The overarching aim of the project was broad: to reduce the risk of ear disease and related hearing loss, and consequent speech and/or language disorders in children up to 5 years of age in remote Northern Territory communities. The objective of the Talking Culture resource had a central educative purpose: to increase family and community knowledge about ear health and the relationship between hearing, early speech, language and pre-literacy development. The Talking Culture resource was developed in collaboration with community members from the outset, meeting its objective of increasing family and community knowledge well before it became a completed product. Community members were engaged in identifying issues of importance in the community and providing feedback on draft versions of the desired resource. This partnership resulted in open discussion about the identified community issues (e.g., otitis media), the purpose of the resource for community education, and whether the resource under development would meet the needs of the community. For example, a community member was concerned about

al., 2019). Aboriginal families have culturally specific ways of monitoring and assessing their children’s development, and intercultural communication between families and service providers is complex and challenging work (Armstrong et al., 2019). Implementation of family-centred practices requires genuine engagement with the family who knows their children best, development of authentic reciprocal partnership and shared communication and goal-setting. Given that families are reliable in identifying the needs of their children and, with support, are effective at supporting their children, family-centred practice is considered a best practice approach to identifying and meeting individual and family needs (ECIA, 2016). Because of the diversity of Aboriginal languages and dialects spoken in the NT, it is often difficult to find and access colleagues fluent in one or more of these languages who also have a local knowledge of child communication development. SLPs may have limited (if any) access to interpreters, cultural advisors or other sources of cultural and linguistic expertise. We might look to Aboriginal community partners who hold this expertise; however, local community experts are often in great demand and funding to pay for their expertise is often absent, despite its critical importance in provision of culturally and linguistically responsive services. Speech Pathology Australia (SPA) NT branch has 67 members and only 1 member identifies as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. The complexity of the socio- political situation of predominantly non-Aboriginal professionals working with Aboriginal people, in a context of colonisation as well as historical and continuing trauma and marginalisation, must be acknowledged. There is much work to be done as we move towards decolonising the profession (see Pillay, 2003; Pillay & Kathard, 2015). Communication access is a human right (Article 19, UDHR; McLeod, 2018) and we are committed to the actions listed in Speech Pathology Australia’s Apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (2019). In the culturally and linguistically diverse context of the NT, developing services that are responsive to the needs of Aboriginal people can only be achieved through intercultural, interdisciplinary partnerships. SLPs are trained in skills and knowledge that have the potential to improve the lives of individuals with communication disability in collaboration with those who have the relevant expertise to implement services which are culturally responsive. The purpose of this paper is to engage with the broader conversation of culturally appropriate SLP service provision in Australia, while specifically seeking to improve the quality of SLP services available to Aboriginal people in the NT. To that end, the authorship team includes seven SLPs based in the NT, five in Darwin (four of whom are working predominantly as researchers), and two in Alice Springs. Caroline is a linguist based in New South Wales. In our experience, SLPs working with Aboriginal clients in the NT are typically managing large case-loads, travelling vast distances, and having to physically locate clients on arrival in communities. It is a challenging work context where SLPs may visit a family and community only 2–4 times a year and the mobility of clients and families means the client may not be seen on every visit. There is a notable turn-over of service providers in the NT, partly related to these challenges paired with limited professional support. Further, there is rarely overlap between an SLP leaving and a new SLP starting, creating gaps in service provision and limited opportunity for transitioning knowledge.

From top to bottom, Rebecca Amery, Anne Lowell, Tanya Wright and Caroline Jones

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JCPSLP Volume 22, Number 1 2020

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