[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Carla Bernier
Date: 01 Oct 2004
Time: 01:04:41 -0500
Remote Name: 216.221.53.17
Albert, The Stuttering Foundation provides a yearly workshop, now at the University of Iowa, I believe. I have had the opportunity to attend the workshop when it was at Northwestern University. It is a two week workshop, and there are 20 participants selected from around the world. It usually takes place in the summer, and so school speech language pathologists could easily take the time to attend. Stuttering Foundation of America has been very generous in offering assistance to get people who are sincerely interested in stuttering to attend the workshops. I suggest you pass this information along to your school speech language pathologists. No child should grow up stuttering, but somehow, you need to educate your people. Don’t feel bad. We are still trying to educate our population in the United States. There are many insurance companies that won’t pay for stuttering, because it is not a medical condition, and many schools that still won’t treat, because it is not considered to interfere with academic progress. We have very few speech language pathologists that will even attempt to treat it, and little training at the graduate levels of our programs in speech pathology. This is a worldwide problem. Even if a speech pathologist is trained, it is often difficult to find clients to treat, as many pediatricians tell their patients that the child will outgrow it. We will continue to try to educate.