Speak Out December 2015

BRANCH news new south wales

Australian Catholic University (ACU) has been running the Connect Stuttering program since August 2015. The program involves third year speech pathology students from north Sydney and Melbourne participating in student- led treatment and professional development for school age children who stutter and their Victorian speech pathologists. The program was devised by Dr. Simone Arnott, National Professional Practice Coordinator at ACU in partnership with the Victorian Department of Education and Training. It involves four student speech pathologists in north Sydney, and six in Melbourne under the guidance of supervising speech pathologists Michelle Donaghy and Cathy Taylor. The children, aged between five and 10 years old, all receive speech therapy by Victorian Department of Education speech pathologists. School age stuttering treatment is challenging. In developing their clinical reasoning, students have demonstrated creative clinical strategies using the latest EBP knowledge, enabling Victorian speech pathologists to develop new ideas and perspectives in the treatment of their clients. Victorian speech pathologists received two days of professional development with stuttering specialists, and ACU Melbourne students led a school age student group day in the school holidays. Connecting stuttering Student Perspective As students, this experience has been invaluable both clinically and in enabling us to see the positives and negatives of telehealth. We have been involved in providing the Lidcombe Program as well as syllable-timed speech, and have adapted treatment approaches to suit the varied needs of the children, their schools and families.

The positives of telehealth include engaging some of the shy children who are more open to speaking to a screen rather than face-to-face, reducing travel time for their families, and providing parents with the opportunity to practice the therapy and receive feedback without feeling like there are too many people watching them. There have been some difficulties encountered, such as technological issues, the connection breaking up (which sometimes appears as a stutter), and the challenges of deciding which activities will be effective via telehealth. One of the most interesting sessions I have experienced included myself and another student speech pathologist providing stuttering therapy to twin six-year-old boys, their mother, a five-year-old girl, her mother and their speech pathologist. To add to the chaos, there were two infant siblings present in Victoria, as well as our supervisor and two other students observing the session in north Sydney. That’s 13 people all involved in a session provided via Polycom on a small iPad screen. It has been interesting to say the least! Overall, everyone involved has provided very positive feedback and we have seen some great progress from the children in this program. We hope to continue this program and perhaps encourage other speech pathologists to consider telehealth for the management of paediatric stuttering. Zoe Heynes Bowles Student Speech Pathologist, Australian Catholic University Michelle Donaghy Lecturer in Speech Pathology and Professional Practice, Australian Catholic University

30

Speak Out December 2015

Speech Pathology Australia