ACQ Vol 13 no 3 2011

Cultural diversity

Working with children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds Implications for assessment and intervention Cori Williams

Working with children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds is a far from simple matter. This paper presents an overview of the challenges faced by Australian speech pathologists who work within one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world. The importance of a general understanding of cultural difference is highlighted, and a framework for thinking about culture is identified. Issues and evidence in the important areas of assessment and intervention with children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are discussed. Australian practitioners are encouraged to contribute practice-based evidence to support clinical practice and provide a foundation for research. T he provision of speech pathology services to children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds presents challenges to speech pathologists around the world. A review of research looking at bilingual children and communication disorders (Kohnert & Medina, 2009) indicates that these challenges have been recognised in the literature for the past 30 years. In recent years, the increased interest in these challenges has been reflected in growth in the published research. In their review of the literature, Kohnert and Medina found 1–2 papers a year which met their search criteria in the 1980s and 1990s, and 4–5 papers a year from 2000. Many of the challenges inherent in working with this population are common in countries around the world. Challenges in the assessment process centre on the need to distinguish language difference (attributable to learning a second language) from language disorder (attributable to an underlying language learning problem). Challenges in the intervention process centre on questions about the most effective way to support language development in bilingual children with language learning disorders. Linguistic, demographic, and geographical factors combine to present particular challenges to the provision of speech pathology services to children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds living in Australia. This paper presents the

issues which arise in the Australian context, as well as evidence which is relevant within that context. The Australian context Australia is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world, home to people from some 270 different ancestral backgrounds, and speakers of more than 400 languages (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2010). The languages include languages spoken by migrants, and those spoken by Indigenous Australians. They may be spoken by relatively small numbers of people, and speakers of the same language may live in areas separated by considerable distances. Speakers of Indigenous languages are concentrated in the remote northern and central regions of the country (ABS, 2010), in areas of low population density. Indigenous languages include both traditional languages and creoles, and children may grow up in complex language contexts which include more than one Indigenous language as well as English. It is estimated that 80% of Indigenous Australians speak Aboriginal English, a non-standard variety which differs from Standard Australian English in a number of ways (McKay, 1996; Malcolm et al., 1999). Many speakers of Aboriginal English live in the less remote areas of the country. English is the official language of Australia (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2010), used in public settings including education and health. The implications for the provision of speech pathology services to children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are clear. The large number of languages spoken within Australian homes makes it unlikely that a bilingual child will encounter a speech pathologist who speaks his/her home language. A recent study investigating speech pathologists’ assessment and intervention practices with multilingual children (Williams & McLeod, 2011) showed that none of the 97 speech pathologists who reported working with bilingual children spoke the first language of that child. Few (12) of the 198 participants reported speaking a language other than English proficiently. The distribution of population within Australia means that speech pathologists who do have proficiency in a language other than English may not be employed in areas which are home to speakers of that language. As a result, few bilingual children will receive speech pathology services from a speech pathologist who speaks his/her first language. Therefore, speech pathologists working with bilingual children need to have foundation knowledge that is not related to specific languages, but which provides a basis from which to approach the issues for individual children/families.

Keywords BILINGUAL CULTURAL AND

LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY

This article has been peer- reviewed

Cori Williams

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ACQ Volume 13, Number 3 2011

ACQ uiring Knowledge in Speech, Language and Hearing