The single largest threat to the practice of speech language pathology is the existence of non-professionals in the arena. These are those who masquerade as professionals but are not trained to play the role. They have picked up the basics of speech language pathology or SLP from one source or another. With this limited knowledge, they have started practicing this rather specialized job! There is one major reason why people do not call their bluff more often: the lack of general awareness about their existence and the harm that they can do. Usually speaking, the speech therapy provided in many institutions, even schools, are offered by these non-professional SLPs. The reasons vary from the possible to the bizarre! For example, most of these speech therapy schools or clinics lack the budget or the government funding is not enough. As a result, they have to hire anyone who claims to be a trained SLP. There is little need for a thorough check into the person’s credentials because frankly, no one cares! In this scenario, handling over the speech therapy of a child to such a therapist is not different from taking snippets of advice on speech therapy from the neighbourhood hack! Studies have proven time and again that if the right kind of therapy is not provided to the child at an impressionable age, the problem can grow deeper roots. You have to ensure that the child requiring therapy is in good hands. In fact, the genuine SLPs often have to […]
