The escalating demand for speech therapy services, among other early interventions, is high priority across our state with some families waiting over three years to secure much needed help.
Responding to this urgent need, the Y WA is partnering with Edith Cowan University’s (ECU) third year speech pathology students, allowing children from the Y WA Baldivis Early Learning Centre (ELC) to reap the benefits of practical on-the-job training from students who are ready to make a real impact.
The Y WA approached ECU to discuss a partnership, inviting the School of Medical and Health Science students to work with and assist to identify developmentally vulnerable children across their ELC’s. Starting as a trial at the Baldivis ELC, third-year speech pathology students are being supervised by a fully qualified clinical educator as they attend the centre once a week for a period of 12 weeks, commencing 27 February 2025.
The collaboration will build off the current School ReadY program, which was developed by the Y WA in 2022 and has been operating across all 14 of the Y WA’s ELC’s since last year. School ReadY focuses on three developmental domains: Literacy and Language, Social and Emotional Wellbeing, and Numeracy, and is designed to support 3–5-year-old children to develop oral language and early literacy skills to give them the best start to formal schooling.
As part of the School ReadY Literacy and Language component, all children complete a language screen (Tier 1) which identifies students in need of extra help with literacy and language skills. For those children at the Y WA Baldivis ELC whose screen indicates they are having trouble and require a higher level of support, this includes working closely with a speech pathologist (Tier 2 intervention).
At the Y WA Baldivis ELC around 12 out of 45 children already tested have screened as requiring extra intervention. The Y WA Literacy Specialist Renee Chakaodza said, “When we identify the need for intervention, we have an established method in place, but having the extra support from speech pathology students at ECU is a win for our organisations, our families and our children. Early intervention is the key to making sure children do not start school behind and it is much harder to remediate a learning difficulty the longer it is left.”
In addition to assisting students at Baldivis, for other children across Y WA ELC’s the ECU students will assist to develop resources that can be shared and used by parents and educators across all centres. The educators will also focus on building the capacity of staff at Baldivis to provide additional support and intervention so they can continue assisting children who need it, once the ECU students have left.
The Y WA CEO Dr Tim McDonald adds, “For children that do not do a language screen at this age, they risk their difficulties with language not being picked up, which could lead in the long term to difficulty reading, learning, and issues with all academic endeavours. Our School ReadY program aims to address these challenges head on and this partnership with ECU is bolstering what we are already successfully doing within the program.”