A geographical analysis of speech-language pathology services to support multilingual children

TY - JOUR

T1 - A geographical analysis of speech-language pathology services to support multilingual children

AU - Verdon, Sarah

AU - McLeod, Sharynne

AU - McDonald, Simon

N1 - Imported on 12 Apr 2017 - DigiTool details were: Journal title (773t) = International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. ISSNs: 1754-9507;

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - The speech-language pathology workforce strives to provide equitable, quality services to multilingual people. However, the extent to which this is being achieved is unknown. Participants in this study were 2,849 practicing members of Speech Pathology Australia and 4,386 children in the Birth cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Statistical and geospatial analyses were undertaken to identify the linguistic diversity and geographical distribution of Australian speech-language pathology services and Australian children. One fifth of services provided by Speech Pathology Australia members (20.2%) were available in a language other than English. Services were most commonly offered in Australian Sign Language (Auslan) (4.3%), French (3.1%), Italian (2.2%), Greek (1.6%), and Cantonese (1.5%). Among 4- to- 5-year-old children in the nationally representative LSAC, 15.3% were regularly spoken to in a language other than English. The most common languages spoken by the children were Arabic (1.5%), Italian (1.2%), Greek (0.9%), Spanish (0.9%), and Vietnamese (0.9%). Despite the relatively high number of multilingual SLP services, there was a mismatch between the location of multilingual services and the languages in which they were offered and the location of, and languages spoken by children. These findings highlight the need for speech-language pathologists, both multilingual and monolingual, to be culturally competent in providing equitable services to all clients regardless of the languages they speak.

AB - The speech-language pathology workforce strives to provide equitable, quality services to multilingual people. However, the extent to which this is being achieved is unknown. Participants in this study were 2,849 practicing members of Speech Pathology Australia and 4,386 children in the Birth cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Statistical and geospatial analyses were undertaken to identify the linguistic diversity and geographical distribution of Australian speech-language pathology services and Australian children. One fifth of services provided by Speech Pathology Australia members (20.2%) were available in a language other than English. Services were most commonly offered in Australian Sign Language (Auslan) (4.3%), French (3.1%), Italian (2.2%), Greek (1.6%), and Cantonese (1.5%). Among 4- to- 5-year-old children in the nationally representative LSAC, 15.3% were regularly spoken to in a language other than English. The most common languages spoken by the children were Arabic (1.5%), Italian (1.2%), Greek (0.9%), Spanish (0.9%), and Vietnamese (0.9%). Despite the relatively high number of multilingual SLP services, there was a mismatch between the location of multilingual services and the languages in which they were offered and the location of, and languages spoken by children. These findings highlight the need for speech-language pathologists, both multilingual and monolingual, to be culturally competent in providing equitable services to all clients regardless of the languages they speak.

KW - Bilingual

KW - Children

KW - Communication

KW - Early childhood

KW - Education

KW - Language

KW - Multilingual

KW - Speech

KW - Speech-language pathology

M3 - Article

VL - 16

SP - 304

EP - 316

JO - Advances in Speech Language Pathology

JF - Advances in Speech Language Pathology

SN - 1441-7049

IS - 3

ER -