Identifying speech and hearing problems early with rural kids
Project
This collaboration is a partnership project between Charles Sturt University, the NSW Department of Education and Communities (DEC) and Albury Community Health. Supervision of CSU speech pathology students is supplied by Albury Community Health, while the DEC offers access to any of 45 schools in the local area, as well as administrative and schools-based support in the form of an Assistant Principal Learning Adviser. In the Schools Project, and by having 4th year students mentor the 2nd year cohort, up to 60 students service ten local schools per annum.
The aim of the Schools Project is to work with teachers, in classrooms, to support the integration of the K-6 Talking and Listening Outcomes of the NSW schools curriculum.
The Project educates speech pathology students in the basic therapeutic sequence of needs analysis, planning, implementation and evaluation of service. It does so, however, by stepping away from the traditional 1:1 context of speech pathology practice.
In terms of accountability to our partners, the resources the students make for the schools are left for their use. We are, however, collating a number of these resources into workbooks for sale to teachers and therapists.
Any profits from these sales will be shared among the partners, thus contributing to the project's long-term sustainability.
This cost-neutral model of community partnership has, and similar to the first year volunteer program, replaced the traditional, and administratively cost-intensive, paediatric block placement of the second year curriculum.
Campus
Albury-Wodonga
Lead Centre
School of Community Health
Partners
- NSW Department of Education and Communities
- Albury Community Health