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Speak Out
December 2015
Speech Pathology Australia
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.
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
Connecting stuttering