Speech Therapy course next !

It is amazing seeing this www.ghanaweb.com: General News of Thursday, 26 April 2007
UEW to start course in Audiology
article on ghanaweb.com. Thank goodness. Ghana is progressing at last.

However, I often wonder how some parents in Ghana would feel when they realise that their child have communication difficulties. What is the next step for such a parent focusing particularly on the vulnerable poor parents.

In Britian, all new babies have the hearing test before they leave hospital. Perhaps with the introduction of the new audiology programme Ghana would start to train public health nurses to commence a hearing test routinely on all our children age 7 months to 8 months. This is known as the 8 months distraction test. The impact of a child with hearing deficit should not be underestimated. These are so many problems that can be associated with children with hearing loss.
These children miss out a great deal. For example, children with receptive language disorder which means the child has difficulties with understanding what is said to them. Treatment options include speech language therapy. Another example is Dyspraxia which is the developmental verbal dyspraxia (DVD) is a disorder that affects the person's ability to organise the movements involved in speech. It is also known as apraxia of speech. The cause is unknown. Speech pathologists are professionals who can diagnose DVD and design therapy programs

I hope this new Audiology course opens the door for the early detection of all children with hearing loss and other communication problems. Nursery teachers may also benefit if they are informed about the common problems associated with communication problems.

If our system fails to identify and help children with speech and language problems they would lack self esteem and confidence. Such children are easily abused by their own parents and labelled as stupid. The become victims for bulleis in schools and the community.

Every child matters so a speech therapy may be all a child needs to regain that self esteem. A step further with theis unique Audiology course would remedy such children.