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From: Marlene
Date: 21 Oct 2004
Time: 15:04:26 -0500
Remote Name: 209.161.242.233
Sara, you are quite right about long waiting lists - however, we do try to prioritize stuttering as it can get worse if neglected. Nevertheless, it is often up to 3 months before the child is assessed and then sometimes up to 6 months for a space to be available in the Parent Fluency Workshop. However, parents are given a lot of counselling and strategies at the assessment as well as contact details for ways to access private practitioners. I am sure that they are all extremely frustrated at not having more rapid and more frequent access to our program. While parents would often prefer to stay within the publicly funded services, when they are really concerned they go outside the system (though obviously this is available only to those who can afford private therapy.) Several families access private clinicians before we even assess them. Sometimes there are some diffeernces between our approach and that of the private clinician and this can be difficult for both the family and ourselves. As a result of the funding constraints, some parents are active in petitioning for more funding for our program. We do wish that we had more funding and could be more available to these families.