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ACQ
Volume 13, Number 3 2011
ACQ
uiring Knowledge in Speech, Language and Hearing
strength of the partnership itself that could subsequently be
used to monitor its ongoing effectiveness. The Continuum
of Partnerships and The Checklist components of the
Partnerships Analysis Tool were completed by each
member of the partnership separately and collated to gain
this measure.
Although limited by the small number of stakeholders
in the partnership, the outcomes gained according to the
Partnerships Analysis Tool suggested that in the initial six
months the partnership had evolved from each of the three
groups working in “Isolation” to working in “Cooperation/
Collaboration” on the Partnership Continuum. Undoonoo
characterised the partnership more as “Cooperating” on
the continuum which likely reflects the fact that CSSP
and Deadly Ears are more aligned in their service delivery
obligations, and therefore it is perhaps more appropriate
for these services to be “Collaborating”. Hence both
Deadly Ears and CSSP characterised the partnership as
being a long-term collaboration which includes shared
planning, joint responsibility, and equal commitment for
goal attainment. Undoonoo characterised the partnership
as involving more of an exchange of information, altering
activities, and sharing resources. However, a high level of
trust and power sharing based on knowledge and expertise
was also indicated across the three groups.
The positive status of the partnership also appeared to
be supported by the verbal feedback gained from the three
service provider representatives and the day-care centre
staff. As mentioned previously, the feedback addressed
three areas: perceived benefits of the partnership to service
providers and the community; positive behaviour changes
within the childcare setting; and areas where the functioning
of the partnership could be improved.
Perceived benefits of the partnership
Intersectoral sharing of knowledge, skills, and resources
with regards to children’s services curriculum, policy,
training methods, and OM and language strategies was
identified as a key benefit of the partnership. This was felt to
then enable a collaborative and consistent approach to the
delivery of training to early childhood education and care
professionals about OM and language stimulation
strategies. These benefits were also reported by Undoonoo
staff (i.e. “I can see that you are working in partnership and
it’s benefiting us”), and in particular reduced overlap and
repetition of information to staff and of more positive
approaches to staff learning and development.
Additional benefits for Deadly Ears and CSSP members
of the partnership included cooperation and consultation
across both services for policy planning and future service
development, and development of a strategy to implement
a leadership model across a wide range of Indigenous
communities.
Benefits to the Woorabinda community were also
identified via feedback from the Undoonoo staff. They
reported that ear health promotion messages spread not
only to children and staff in the childcare but further into the
wider community (i.e. “we are able to get the information on
ears out into the community”). This was then felt to result in
increased health awareness and action in the community:
“More awareness in the community of children’s needs,
especially their ears and speech. Parents are asking more
questions where before they were too shame to ask or
didn’t know what to ask”.
Moving forward in partnership
The partnership’s first step was to develop a joint vision and
objectives. The shared vision became: “all children have the
right to be healthy and engage in learning environments”.
This goal aligns with the Commonwealth’s vision that “by
2020 all children will have the best start in life to create a
better future for themselves and the nation” (COAG, 2009).
The partnership agreed that their key objective was to
empower Undoonoo Day Care centre staff to (a) know
about OM, its causes and consequences; (b) identify OM
in the children and refer to an appropriate service; and (c)
use key strategies to support the language development
of the children (i.e., get down and close, engage with
interest, talk to the children about what they are doing). An
additional objective was to develop community-owned and
community-specific resources to promote ear health to the
wider community.
Strategies, activities, and actions to progress these
goals were also identified through a process of consultation
within the partnership. The focus was to meet the needs of
the childcare director and the training requirements of the
staff to support them to complete their childhood services
studies. Specific activities included:
•
Deadly Ears staff delivered a series of video-
teleconferences (VTC) to rural and remote support TAFE
teachers around the state on OM, the impact of OM, and
strategies to facilitate learning with a conductive hearing
loss. This was a train-the-trainer model of delivery to
support rural and remote support teachers to embed
OM into the delivery of their curriculum to their students;
•
collaboration for the delivery of training in Certificate IV
Training and Assessment for the directors of Indigenous
day cares across the state to include the development
of a module on language stimulation and a module on
OM;
•
collaboration on training of day care staff on health and
hygiene curricula, including strategies to reduce cross
infections;
•
imbedding nose blowing and hand washing into
transitions with the children have been included
into professional conversations, presentations, and
assessment for childhood services students.
The partnership ensured that all training delivered aligned
to the needs of the community and that all follow-up,
regardless of the service, contained consistent information
and messages.
Evaluation of the partnership
Six months following initial implementation, preliminary
evaluation was done to determine how effective the
partnership had been, whether it was useful for all involved,
and if it represented a model to move forward with in the
future, both in Woorabinda and in other Indigenous
communities. This was done through Deadly Ears allied
health staff seeking verbal feedback from representatives of
Undoonoo Day Care and the CSSP, and Undoonoo’s
director seeking feedback from day care centre staff. The
information gained from these conversations was recorded
and then reviewed to gain a sense of perceived benefits of
the partnership to service providers and the community,
positive behaviour changes within the childcare setting, and
areas where the functioning of the partnership could be
improved. In addition to this, the Partnership Analysis Tool
(VicHealth, 2004) was used to gain a measure of the