Speak Out August 2016

Association news

Dr Suze Leitão

Suze has significant editorial experience, having served as Co-editor of ACQ and on several editorial Boards. In May 2006, Suze was appointed to a senior member position on the Speech Pathology Australia Ethics Board – a consultative board to the Speech Pathology Australia Board of Directors. She was subsequently appointed to the position of Chair of the Association’s Ethics Board in May 2010, and to date has served two full, three year terms as Chair and was recently appointed for a third term. Suze demonstrates a commitment to promotion of proactive ethical practice for speech pathologists, through her leadership on the Ethics Board. Significant achievements have been made by the Ethics Board during Suze’s tenure as Chair. The hard copy Ethics Education Package was updated and re-published in 2014, and is in the process of further development. Suze is one of two Ethics Board members who have undertaken work to create two online ‘modules’, which will present the educational material in an interactive online format, as a contemporary resource. Suze has made significant contributions to ethics education within the profession. She is a regular contributor to the Ethics column in JCPSLP, and previously ACQ, she teaches the application of the Speech Pathology Australia ‘Code of Ethics’ within clinical education, and provides professional development activities on ethical decision making to speech pathologists in Western Australia, as well within the annual Ethics Workshop at the National Conference. The Association benefits substantially from the time and consideration Suze shows in her support and contribution to Speech Pathology Australia’s ethics, professional practice and policy and advocacy projects. Suze is generous with her time and knowledge, strives to ensure she is available to provide timely support and advice and assists in the application of the Code of Ethics to support members with their ethical reasoning in challenging situations.

Suze has been a highly active member of Speech Pathology Australia and in the profession of speech pathology since 1986, having been awarded Fellowship in 2008. Suze is passionate about making a difference to both her clients and the profession, she has worked across a range of settings in Western Australia including working in teaching hospitals, schools, private practice and at a university. During the eighties and nineties while working at a language development centre, Suze was instrumental in promoting best practice, establishing a series of professional development workshops for clinicians by clinicians. These shared workshops fostered a collaborative relationship among paediatric speech pathologists working in Perth. Suze has always been passionate about providing evidence based, theoretically driven intervention to her clients, even before these terms were in common usage. For example when confronted with a large caseload of children with significant language impairment within a school setting in the late eighties, Suze set to work within a collaborative consultation model to develop a new service delivery model. This resulted in an article published in ACQ in the early 1990s. This work, and the resulting article had a significant impact on service delivery in Western Australia. During this time Suze was also mentoring speech pathologists working with similar populations, in both country and metropolitan areas. Based on her body of work, she has developed a number of protocols to assess discourse in the paediatric population. Two of these, Peter and the Cat and Squirrel story, are commercially available in hard copy and as APPs and used by speech pathologists throughout Australia and internationally. Suze has acted as a mentor to many speech pathologists in Western Australia and nationally, on both a formal and informal basis for a number of years. This has included mentoring people with limited experience as well as acting as a mentor and sounding board for colleagues with many years experience. She currently acts as a formal mentor to speech pathologists working in schools for children with a language learning impairment, and speech pathologists working in the justice system.

life member

Suze has always been passionate about providing evidence based, theoretically driven intervention to her clients, even before these terms were in common usage.

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August 2016 www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

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