Speak Out December low res draft 2017

Out & About

Developing the speech pathology profession in Ghana AUSTRALIAN SPEECH PATHOLOGISTS ARE ASSISTING THEIR GHANIAN COUNTER-PARTS TO SHIFT THE LANDSCAPE FOR PEOPLE WITH COMMUNICATION AND SWALLOWING DIFFICULTIES.

of the SLT profession. How to best start local training for speech pathology has been the topic of discussion in Ghana for a number of years. The Ministry of Health seeded the profession by providing scholarships for Ghanaians to train as SLTs in London. The return of these graduates (Ms Josephine Bampoe and Mr Clement Amponsah), their employment at the University of Ghana, alongside Ghanaian speech pathologist (Ms Nana Akua Owusu) and the addition of an Australian speech pathologist on the team (Ms Karen Wylie, resident in Ghana) meant that Ghana finally had the potential to consider training speech pathologists. In 2016, after three years in planning, the University of Ghana accepted its first group of Masters of Speech and Language Therapy students. Twelve students are now more than halfway through their degree. The programme at the University of Ghana is locally developed and delivered, and unique to the culture and context in Ghana. It focuses on both meeting the needs of individuals with communication disability, as well as prevention, early intervention, community awareness of communication disability and working with self-help groups. During the planning phases, the team identified the need for support from outside Ghana for teaching specialised subject matter, and supporting clinical block placements. The team recognised that costs associated with volunteering was a barrier to securing the volunteers they required.

COMMUNICATION AND SWALLOWING difficulties present enormous challenges to individuals and their families. These challenges are magnified a thousand-fold in a country such as Ghana, where services for communication and swallowing difficulties are extremely rare. In Ghana, there is a team of speech pathologists working hard to make the needed changes and improve services. The Australian Government and Australian speech pathologists are providing small but meaningful contributions to this change, which will slowly help to shift the landscape for people with communication and swallowing difficulties in Ghana. Can you imagine having only seven speech pathologists to provide services to the whole population of Australia? For families in Ghana, that is their reality. Finding a speech pathologist, or any type of service for communication difficulties is extremely difficult. Families travel enormous distances for services. At present there are seven speech pathologists in the country, providing services to a population of 25 million people. Only three of these speech pathologists are Ghanaian, trained in London. The remainder are foreigners, living and working in Ghana for various reasons, commonly on short placements of one-year or less. In response to the need for improved services for communication disability, Ghana has slowly been investing in the development

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December 2017 www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

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