Speak Out Dec 2016 low res final

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From the President
Gaenor Dixon
Gaenor Dixon
National President
Globally 2016 seems to have been a year of big events; the US election,
Brexit, devastating earthquakes in New Zealand. For the speech pathology
community we have seen Rosie Martin, Tasmanian Branch Chair, win Tasmanian
of the Year, which places her in the nominations for Australian of the Year. My
congratulations to Rosie - a much deserved award for her commitment to
accessible services to all. The IALP conference was held in Ireland with Australian
speech pathologists giving key notes and responded to key notes, as well as
presenting many papers. Those are just two examples of Australian speech
pathologists achieving high recognition of their contributions that have occurred
over the year.
In the Association, we have:
• collected and established our aspirations for the profession in the Speech
Pathology 2030 project. We have worked to embed and work towards the
attainment of those aspirations in the development of the strategic plan from
2017-2019.
• started to explore credentialing, what could it mean for the profession, and
what does credentialing mean?
• worked with State and Federal Ministers and the NDIA to resolve various
issues with the NDIS – with a range of successes – and some ongoing work.
We have continued to advocate across a broad range of areas including
MBS items, school-age services, youth justice, mental health and aged care.
• added to and updated our suite of clinical guidelines and position
statements,
• worked on a model of CPD for our members – ensuring we offer
professional learning in a range of formats and cater to the range of
experience and needs of our members,
• continued to ensure that we are supporting our early career speech
pathologists through support for quality supervision and mentoring,
• continued to provide strong ethical support for members and robust
protection for the public through our ethical standards,
• worked with our members to promote the profession through Swallowing
Awareness Day, Speech Pathology Week and Book of the Year, and
• continued to work with the International Communication Project –
developing a three year plan to ensure the message that communication is a
basic human right is embedded throughout the world.
My thanks to our dedicated, hard-working National Office staff, who have
either worked directly on these initiatives, or on other day-to-day work of the
Association that keeps everything moving so that we are able to continue to
work towards our vision of effective communication and safe swallowing – a
right for all Australians across their lifespan.
I hope that you have a restful and invigorating summer holiday period, and that
you return for 2017 ready to hurtle towards 2030!
December 2016 Speak Out 3