Speak Out August 2020 DIGITAL EDITION

Speech pathologists in schools

Collaboration A whole school approach By Lucy Sutherland

In Victoria, there are special schools (for students with mild- moderate intellectual disability), specialist schools (for student with a specific type of disability e.g., physical impairment, vision impairment, ASD specific etc) and then special developmental schools such as Broadmeadows SDS. Broadmeadows SDS is a Prep- yr 12 school in Broadmeadows, Melbourne. It has approximately 300 students on two campuses. The main eligibility requirement for students is a moderate-profound intellectual disability. Many students have other diagnoses as well such as ASD and CP. The class sizes at the school vary from 5 students to 14 students, depending on age and ability. Each class has either a teacher and teacher’s aide (ES) or two teachers. Across the state, therapists work in a range of different ways in special, special development and other specialist schools. At BSDS, our therapy team is quite large- with a current staffing of 14 speech pathologists (SP) (FTE 13.7), 15 occupational therapists (FTE 14.7) and 4 physiotherapists (FTE 2.8), with a teaching staff of 62 teachers and 33 education support staff (teacher’s aides).

The large team of therapists means that we are able to work in unique ways than for many other schools, where caseloads can be very large and the opportunity to work alongside teachers is limited. A key aspect of the collaborative way in which therapists and teachers at BSDS work is centred around two main components; the model in which therapists work in the classroom and the weekly case conference. Firstly, therapists’ caseloads are generally about 3-4 classes, equating to 20-30 students. This equates to anywhere from 5-8 hours per week that the therapist is in class with the teacher. This very hands on approach to providing therapy lends itself more easily to a collaborative model, and provides both the teacher/s and therapist/s with a unique perspective. For therapists, it is much easier to understand how a classroom runs and provides an insight in to how students are progressing in both specific curriculum based lessons as well as, importantly, social aspects of school and the general daily routines. This means therapists’ contributions to team discussions are richer in understanding of the context in which intervention occurs. In an ideal world,

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Speak Out | August 2020