Speak Out August 2017 low res

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August 2017 Speak Out 25
Amanda Dansky (SPA Aged Care Working
Party) hosted the Speech Pathology Australia’s
networking pod at the 2016 LASA National
Congress.
Kym Torresi joins the SPA Aged
Care Working Party
It is with pleasure that SPA announces the
appointment of Kym Torresi to the ACWP.
Kym brings 25 years of clinical experience
working with people who are ageing across
acute, subacute, home and community, and
residential aged care settings in both public
and private sectors. Furthermore, her high-level knowledge
of sector reforms gained through various management roles
will be an asset to the group. Kym has worked extensively
within home, and community-based services to support the
independence of people who are ageing, an area of practice
especially impacted by current aged care sector reforms.
She also provides ongoing supervision and mentoring to
community-based speech pathologists. Kym has previously
represented the Association at meetings of the National
Aged Care Alliance (NACA). Her clinical expertise in areas of
augmentative and alternative communication and previous
experience in community capacity building projects in
relation to communicative access are also directly relevant
to the Association’s current aged care project plan. Kym
also brings a unique understanding of disability and aged
care interface issues, invaluable as the NDIS and aged care
reforms continue to roll out simultaneously. Congratulations
Kym, we are very much looking forward to working with you.
The Association was delighted to receive a large number of
high-quality applications for the vacancy on the SPA Aged
Care Working Party (ACWP) from members with extensive
experience and diverse interests in aged care.
The Association would like to extend a sincere thank you to
all those who expressed interest in the vacancy. We hope to
engage all applicants in some way through subcommittees
or working groups to help progress strategic initiatives
and bring together a network of highly experienced and
passionate members working in aged care. Wonderful to see
this profile continuing to grow!
Jade Cartwright
National Advisor Aged Care
A NUMBER OF resources to support the uptake of
supervision have been developed over the past few
years, to address the issue that many members were
seeking mentoring due to a lack of supervision. However,
increasingly those who are in supervisory relationships are
not recognising these relationships for what they are.
In the last couple of years members have contacted me to
register a mentoring partnership, but it became clear upon
further questioning that the relationship was supervisory
in nature.
The three key indicators that a professional support
relationship is supervisory rather mentoring are:
• both speech pathologists work for the same
organisation;
• the speech pathologists meet 1:1 for more than 1 to
2 hours a month;
• the less experienced speech pathologist is not
receiving discipline-specific professional support from
anyone else in the organisation.
Speech Pathology Australia recommends that all early
career speech pathologists receive one hour per week
of clinical supervision, so if there is a more senior speech
pathologist in the workplace, there is an expectation that
this more senior clinician will provide supervision to the
less experienced clinician.
The value Speech Pathology Australia places on adequate
and appropriate professional support is evident – one
of the requirements to progress from provisional to full
CPSP status is 12 points in PSR Activity Type M, with the
Association preferring supervision over mentoring if both
options are available.
Mentoring relationships need to be registered but
supervisory relationships do not.
Further information can be found on the SPA website.
For information about progressing from provisional
to full CPSP go to Members Professional
Self Regulation Supervision go to Members
Supervision
For mentoring go to Members Mentoring
Or contact Meredith Prain psa@
Dr Meredith Prain
Professional Support Advisor
Are you in a
supervisory
relationship and
don’t even know it?
Spotlight on professional
support