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14

Speak Out

December 2017

www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

Aged Care

Working Party

The SPA Aged Care Working Party held its last meeting

in Melbourne in November. The working party had a day

of collaborative brain storming and planning for future

activities and advocacy relating to speech pathology in

aged care.

Facebook Ageing and

Aged Care Member

Community

Be sure to join the SPA Ageing and Aged Care Facebook

member community page. Latest aged care information,

articles and resources are shared regularly and it’s a great

way to network and share with other speech pathologist’s

in the aged care sector.

LASA Congress

The Leading Aged Services Association

(LASA) Congress was held on the Gold

Coast on 15-17 October. Jess Hayward

SPA Aged Care Project Officer, and

Amanda Dansky SPA Aged Care Working

Party, attended to raise awareness about

the role of speech pathology in ageing

and aged care via a marketing pod.

Across the three days, we had several

interested service providers, academics

and businesses asking questions

and taking away flyers about speech

pathology. The “Communication Matters”

DVD was on loop with lots of chat

about the importance of communication

assessment and supports in aged care.

Overall it was a successful awareness

activity. A special thankyou to Amanda

Dansky for volunteering her time for the

event.

Advocacy in aged care

DVA and Stroke Alliance

In October and November, the SPA aged care team attended

National Stroke Coalition and Department Veteran Affairs (DVA)

Health Consultative Forum meetings. These meetings provided an

opportunity to advocate and highlight the role of speech pathology

in older people post stroke or for those who receive care under

DVA.

Key updates in the area of stroke

include:

• Work is being undertaken to roll out the tele-stroke program

nationally. This provides a network of neurologists and stroke

specialists to provide assessment and intervention through

telemedicine including educating staff and family using scans

and images in a “flip around” screen.

• New stroke guidelines were launched during Stroke Week. The

guidelines are online via InformMe and summary documents

for health care professionals and consumers have been

developed with more specific discipline (medical, nursing and

allied health) guidelines to follow.

From DVA:

The review of allied health and dental service continues

• DVA is focused on improving both provider and veteran

engagement through DVA transformation projects and co-

design of services.

• Feedback was provided regarding the delay in approval of DVA

services for speech pathologists. Members are encouraged to

continue to alert SPA to these issues so as we can continue to

feedback to DVA.

• Members are encouraged to sign up to the DVA Provider

e-newsletter here:

http://dva.us10.list-manage.com/subscri

be?u=3e65ae0f3ef290709fbe2617b&id=f18b81395b