JCPSLP Vol 16 Issue 1 2014

8 Allied health assistants Utilising allied health assistants (AHAs) can help to achieve excellent therapy outcomes and improve service efficiency. Maroondah Hospital Community Health Speech Pathology is fortunate enough to have a part-time AHA who assists resource creation, runs speech and language therapy groups, and participates in quality improvement projects. This results in a more effective and efficient service, which is able to assist a greater number of patients. 9 Parent training Providing specific and comprehensive parent training and support with home programs is a large part of the speech pathology service at the Maroondah Hospital Community Health Speech Pathology department. When trained, supported and directed by a speech pathologist, parents of children receiving speech therapy can be very effective in administering most treatments (Cirrin et al., 2010). At Maroondah, group-based interventions targeting language and speech skills always incorporate a parent training element, with parents attending all sessions. 10 Colourful Semantics There is a growing body of evidence to support the use of Colourful Semantics with children who have expressive language difficulties (Bolderson, Dosanjh, Milligan, Pring & Chlat, 2011). Created by speech and language therapist Alison Bryan in the United Kingdom, the approach has been utilised and described in Victoria by Andrea Hewett, speech pathologist, as well as the Catholic Education Office, Archdiocese of Melbourne. Utilising colour-coded words and pictures, children are taught to understand and

create sentences that contain elements such as “who” or “what doing?” References Bolderson, S., Dosanjh, C., Milligan, C., Pring, T., & Chlat, S. (2011). Colourful semantics: A clinical investigation. Child Language Teaching and Therapy , 27 (3), 344–353. Cirrin, F.M., Schooling, T.L., Nelson, N.W., Diehl, S.F., Flynn, P.F., Staskowski, M., Torrey, T.Z., & Adamczyk, D.F. (2010). Evidence-based systematic review: Effects of different service delivery models on communication outcomes for elementary school-age children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools , 41 , 233–264. Dodd, B., Hua, Z., Crosbie, S., Holm, A., & Ozanne, A. (2002). Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP) . London: Psychological Corporation. Goodhue, R., Onslow, M., Quine, S., O’Brian, S., & Hearne, A. (2010). The Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention: Mothers’ experiences. Journal of Fluency Disorders , 35 (1). Wiig, E. H., Secord, W. A., Semel, E. (2006). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals – Australian Standardised Edition (4th ed.). London: Psychological Corporation. Correspondence to: Amy Rynsent Senior Speech Pathologist/Team Co-ordinator Eastern Health Community Health Paediatric Speech Pathology Service 8 Grey Street, Ringwood East, Vic. 3135 phone: +61 (0)3 9871 3599 email: amy.rynsent@easternhealth.org.au

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JCPSLP Volume 16, Number 1 2014

Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology