Speak Out August 2020 low res

Association news

Speech Pathology Week 2020

When this article was being written, metropolitan Melbourne had just entered a six-week lockdown to combat the challenges thrown-up by a new outbreak of COVID-19. The Association’s national office was closed and its staff were continuing to work remotely from their homes. Notwithstanding, planning for a new and different Speech Pathology Week was still underway. The public awareness campaign in 2020 will almost entirely be conducted digitally and online. This year, the Speech Pathology Week kit, with its promotional collateral, has been replaced with a digital campaign kit, available for all members to download form the Association’s website. The digital campaign kit includes a range of graphics and ideas about how members them can use them to promote Speech Pathology Week and the week’s theme: ‘Communicating with Confidence’, via social media and other digital channels. Members will also find on the Speech Pathology Week page on the website posters and fliers that can be downloaded and printed either in their office or taken to a commercial printer. The posters and fliers are provied in different formats to allow this. Each year Speech Pathology Australia hosts Speech Pathology Week to create awareness of those in our community who have a communication or swallowing difficulty. To reinforce the theme adopted in 2019, the theme for Speech Pathology Week 2020 will again be: Communicating with Confidence. In 2020, Speech Pathology Week is 23-29 August. Around 1.2 million people in Australia have a communication disability. Every day speech pathologists work those Australians to provide them with the confidence to communicate. Sadly, communication disability is largely invisible. Unseen and out-of-sight. Australians with communication disability are the silent suffers that cannot maximise future educational, health and social outcomes, without the intervention of a speech pathologist.

SOCIAL MEDIA COMPETITION Take a photograph of you and someone who is ‘Communicating with Confidence’ thanks to you; Post it on Instagram and/or Twitter; and Include the Association’s handle @ SpeechPathAus and the hashtag #SPweek PLAY IT FORWARD Using one of the graphics from the Speech Pathology Week digital kit (or create your own graphic); Post it on Instagram and/or Twitter; and Add the handles of three colleagues and the hashtag #SPweek and Play It Forward (e.g. “Together with my speechie colleagues, @ Friend01 @Friend02 @Friend03 we are working to ensure all Australians are Communicating with Confidence #SPweek”) 2 easy ways to get involved

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SP Week

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Speak Out | August 2020