JCPSLP Vol 16 Issue 1 2014

children used more utterances containing print/sound references in the shared storybook reading and the post story writing activity. The methodological rigour of the paper was good, with random allocation of teachers to groups, blinding of assessors and appropriate statistical control and evaluation; the level of detail and explanations found in the methods sections allows for replication of this study. The paper suggests that the use of ABC and Beyond: The Hanen Program for Building Emergent Literacy in Early Childhood Settings can be used with confidence to train professionals to use effective strategies for promoting emergent literacy development in young children. The program can be used in clinical and educational settings by teachers and speech- language pathologists because it does not require extensive training. More research is needed to assess whether 1) the results were maintained long-term once the training was completed and teachers had no contact with their trainers regarding the implementation of the program and whether 2) changes in the children’s use of decontextualised language were maintained long-term. speechBITE rating: 5/10 Student implementation of the Camperdown Program for adults who stutter Cocomazzo, N., Block, S., Carey, B., O’Brian, S., Onslow, M., Packman, A. & Iverach, L. (2012). Camperdown program for adults who stutter: A student training clinic Phase 1 trial. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders , 47 (4), 365–372. Patricia McCabe Do properly supervised students provide therapy equivalent to that of experienced clinicians? The profession has an interest in this question as it underlies the provision of clinical education placements. Indeed, in any situation where student therapy may be charged for, such as a university clinic, there is an ethical imperative to advise potential patients and their carers of the answer and allow them to make an informed decision about their treatment. It is therefore surprising how little information is available about the efficacy of student provided therapy per se.

Stuttering researchers, however, have a long history of examining whether student training clinics can provide adequate or equivalent treatment to clinics which are solely staffed by qualified clinicians. This paper reports the equivalence of a student training clinic in delivering the Camperdown Program for Adults who Stutter. The Camperdown Program is a speech restructuring treatment which has randomised control level evidence of efficacy in studies conducted by qualified clinicians (e.g., Carey, O’Brian, Onslow, Block, Jones & Packman, 2010). The program uses video examples of a new speech pattern to model what patients are required to do. Four training components are presented within the program: “1) individual teaching sessions, 2) group practice day, 3) individual problem solving sessions, and 4) maintenance” (Carey et al., 2010, p. 109). The Camperdown Program has been shown to be effective in both face-to-face modes and when delivered by telephone (telehealth). The findings show equivalence of outcomes to non- student delivered therapy and therefore we can be reasonably comfortable that this particular intervention when delivered by students with appropriate supervision is equally effective. It is interesting that many treatments across the range of speech pathology relevant disorders were developed with students providing the clinical delivery (e.g., Ballard, Robin, McCabe & McDonald, 2010), yet most treatment studies do not report this and fewer evaluate the comparative efficacy. Unfortunately, the design of this study does not allow a speechBITE rating of research methodological rigour; however, Cocomazzo and colleagues are to be congratulated for evaluating student treatment outcomes. References Ballard, K. J., Robin, D. A. McCabe, P., & McDonald, J. (2010). A novel treatment of prosody in children with CAS. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research , 53 , 1227–1245. Carey, B., O’Brian, S., Onslow, M., Block, S., Jones, M., & Packman, A. (2010). Randomized controlled non- inferiority trial of a telehealth treatment for chronic stuttering: The Camperdown Program. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders , 45 (1), 108–120.

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JCPSLP Volume 16, Number 1 2014

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