Speak Out April 2018

Service Delivery TAH team aims to work within a Response to Intervention framework to build the capacity of educators to support all students to be successful learners. Educators access the TAH team through referral pathway at each level. The figure above provides examples of some of the services TAH provides. In the NT context, with 73% of our schools being remote and very remote, TAH utilises a variety of methods to facilitate maximum access to supports with limited individual resources. This includes: • Delivery of professional development and workshops via Skype, • Video conferencing, • Remote classroom delivering lessons and individual or group sessions via Skype, • Co-teaching with educators in their classrooms, • Providing phone and email support, • In person supports across all three levels. Pilot Study In order to road test our service delivery and to measure effective outcomes in a realistic way, TAH team speech pathologists selected a level 1 referral from a primary school located in Darwin metro area. The referral requested whole school support for their students to develop their speech sounds. The following support was proposed at each level over a 3 term period: Level 1: Universal – Term 1 • Bespoke whole staff professional development workshop in supporting speech sound development in the classroom, • Whole staff training in administering a speech screener, • Support from speech pathologist to identify and group cohorts of students based on screener results. Level 2: Target – Terms 2 & 3 • Speech pathologist to design group programs for an eight week period,

• Training to staff facilitating speech sound groups, • Speech pathologist to provide two in person support sessions with school staff and group participants, • One skype support session, • Mentoring and coaching to staff throughout program delivery remotely via email, phone calls and skype as requested, • Support from speech pathologist to analyse repeat screeners following group intervention to evaluate program effectiveness and regroup cohorts of students and adjust programs accordingly, • Support from speech pathologist to identify students who would benefit from intensive individual support. Level 3: Individual – Term 3 • Speech pathologist to complete individual speech assessment with identified students, • Provision of evidenced based individualised program(s), • Training to staff administering individual program. The school accepted the proposal and is currently in the screening phase of the project. They have currently screened 100+ students in their preschool and transition classes. We are looking forward to seeing the results of our pilot student and will strive to be innovative in replicating it across the NT. Future As the two speech pathologists in a new team tasked with providing quality services to children across a vast region we are acutely aware of the monumental challenges ahead of us. We are excited that we have the opportunity to forge a new place for speech pathologists in education in the NT. We hope that by showing effective outcomes of pilot projects such as this one we can grow our team in the near future.

Ciara-Lucy Forrest and Laura Browne-Pike Speech Pathologists – Teaching & Allied Health Team Department of Education Northern Territory Government

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April 2018 www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

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