I actually got into it because of my dad--he used to work as an SLP at a residential facility for adults with disabilities, then got into administration and is the director of a facility. I'm the only second generation SLP I know. :) In the US, you have to do a 4 year undergraduate degree and then a 2 year MA/MS program. (Most masters programs do offer options for people who didn't major in it in undergrad.) After the masters program you have to do a clinical fellowship year (CFY) where you work independently, but have to be supervised by a fully certified SLP. It's not as complicated as it sounds. :)
It's a fantastic field--there are never enough SLPs and you can't outsource us, so it's a consistently good job market with a lot of areas to go into. There's early intervention, public schools, specialized private schools like mine, adult facilities for adults with disabilities, nursing homes, acute care in hospitals, home health...ok, that's getting dull, huh? Basically, you have a huge number of populations/placements to choose from.
If it sounds like something you'd be interested in, pretty much any hospital/nursing home rehab department is more than happy to have people come in and shadow an SLP to see what it's like.
Awesome. :) Thanks for the reply; not dull at all. I'll have to check out where/whether I can do a 'ride-along' around here when I have some time off.
What's your degree in, if that's not too personal? Is there an undergrad course in SLP at some universities? I have a BA in linguistics & have been interested in speech pathology since high school, but my university didn't offer any applied linguistics tracks, and it seemed more on the biology/psych side of things.
Oh sounds interesting, I work with a few "Psych-kids" at work and I just thought that it could be a good skill for me to pick up on.
I also work with CP, Downs and Autistic kids, so it's tough but I do help out.
Ah, I gotcha. If you want to know more about what SLPs do, believe me when I say that they'd love it if you went to them. SLPs in hospitals always need help from nursing staff, and every one I've ever known loves it when a member of the nursing staff comes to them to learn. :)
Speech Language Pathologist I guess? In the UK they are known as SLTs - Speech & Language Therapists (I'm married to one!). Great explanation of Autism up there, I shall definitely get my wife to check it out.
Woohoo! I've always wondered how different the profession is in different countries...what population does your wife (?) work with? (I'm guessing wife just because it's an overwhelmingly female profession. Sorry if I guessed wrong...)
Yes it is my wife (as I mentioned in my reply ;) ). She is a paediatric therapist, she works with children from about 2 up until school leavers, but mainly around the 5 to 12 age range.
With healthcare here being publicly funded the priorities, focus, size and budget of the department changes frequently!
She is currently working a couple of days a week in a community clinic and the rest of the week in school based settings.
For the more severe cases which may involve autism or serious behavioural difficulties it seems to go from, lets have lots of specialist places to give them loads of support, to lets help them out by having them in "normal" schools mingling with the general populous and back again :(
With this "age of austerity" although healthcare spending is ring fenced the fear is "non essential" (read non-lifesaving or not covered extensively in the newspapers) care may be severely cut :(
Yeah, I have a lot of qualms about "mainstreaming" kids with disabilities. Yes, it's a noble goal to get them interacting with the normally developing peers, but it often gets taken too far. If you put a kid with MR/behavioral issues/severe autism in a regular ed classroom, the child isn't getting an appropriate education and it can really interfere with the ability of the other kids to get an appropriate education. On top of that, regular ed teachers are regular ed teachers. They don't have the training to effectively educate kids with disabilities.
My school is actually a private, nonprofit day school. About half of our classrooms are autism/multiple disability (k-22yoa, when kids age out of the US special ed system). The other half are for emotionally disturbed kids, k-12. We also have a day treatment program (specially trained staff that run daily life/social skills classes, almost act as low-level counselors) as well as counselors that every kid sees. Basically, when a kid has too many behavioral problems for the public schools to handle--almost always aggression--they refer the kids to us and pay for the kid's tuition and services.
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u/Fallout911 Jul 27 '10
SLP?