3 promising strategies that promise to help children, as speech therapy team deviates from DEI

Several experts and speech pathologists say that in the need of more experts and speech pathologists say that when more speech and helping multilingual learners are needed, it can have devastating effects involving understanding and trying to cope with the difference in children’s language, culture and family environment.

They told me some promising strategies to enhance speech services for children with speech delays in multilingual infants, toddlers and preschoolers, each of which is heavily dependent on DEI and cultural competence.

Embrace creative people

The Navajo Nation faces a severe shortage of training staff to assess and work with young children including developmental delays. So in 2022, Allison-Burbank and his research team began providing voice assessment and treatment training for Indigenous family coaches who have already worked with families through the Tribal Family Visit Program. Family coaches provide voice support until a more permanent solution is found, Allison-Burbank said.

The Family Visit Program is “for people like me who try to identify these children more widely and get temporary services.” (There are serious threats due to federal government cuts, including Medicaid, Family Visit Programs and Speech Therapy.)

Use language tests designed for multilingual people

Decades ago, there were few tests used to diagnose voice delays that were “normative” or pretests for expectations and benchmarks for non-English speaking populations.

For example, a few years ago, the Texas early childhood intervention program had to use a single tool that relies on English specifications to diagnose Spanish-speaking children. “We found an increase in diagnosis for very young (Spanish-speaking) children,” she said. This is not because all children have phonological delays, but because of the fundamental differences between the two languages not reflected in the test design and the score. (For example, in Spanish, the sound of “z” is pronounced like in English’s.)

There are now more choices for screeners and tools for multilingual, diverse populations than ever before; states, institutions and school districts should be selective and in the search for them and push for continued progress.

Extended Training – Formal and Self-inspired – Working in the best way with speech therapists

In the long run, the best way to help more bilingual children is to hire more bilingual speech therapists through a strong DEI effort. But in the short term, speech therapists cannot rely solely on interpreters (even if available) to connect with multilingual children.

This means leveraging resources that undermine the main differences in pronunciation and usage between English and family languages, Kester said. “As therapists, we need to understand the patterns of language, and what we expect and what we don’t expect,” Kester said.

Katharine Zuckerman, general pediatric professor and associate deputy director of Oregon Health and Science University, said it is also crucial for therapists to understand how cultural norms may change, especially when they coach parents and caregivers how best to raise their children.

“The idea is that parents sitting on the floor playing with their kids and teaching them how to talk is a very American cultural idea,” she said. “In many communities, it doesn’t work.”

In other words, to help a child, the therapist must accept an idea of being suddenly trapped: cultural competence,

Quick Shooting: Related Research

Several studies have been conducted in recent years on how the state’s early intervention system provides children with age-born children born in 3 years of age, with shorter multilingual children with verbal challenges. A study based in Oregon, co-authored by Zuckerman, found that Spanish-speaking children generally have less vocal diagnosis than those who speak English. Rather than pointing out specific challenges, Spanish speakers tend to obtain the general “language delay” name. This makes it even more difficult to connect the family to the most tailoring and the most beneficial treatments.

A second study found that speech pathologists often miss key steps when evaluating early intervention in multilingual children. This can lead to overdiagnosis, inadequate diagnosis and inappropriate assistance. The authors concluded: “These findings suggest the urgent need to increase preparation at the preparatory level and strong advocacy… to ensure evidence-based EI assessments and family-centered, family-centered culturally responsive interventions for children of all backgrounds.”

Carr is a researcher in New America, focusing on reporting young children’s problems.

By signal in CAS.37 or samuels@hechingerreport.org.