What’s this project all about?

Building the Foundations for Effective Communication for Victorians with Behaviours of Concern subject to restrictive practices.

In 2009, Scope was funded by the Office of the Senior Practitioner, Victoria to develop a set of assessment resources for speech pathologists to use when assessing the communication of people who demonstrate Behaviours of Concern. The project is being delivered by the Communication Resource Centre in collaboration with Scope’s Research team. 

The field of communication assessment for people who have Behaviours of Concern is a new and challenging area for speech pathologists and has been traditionally seen as the territory of other professionals. It is hoped that the outcome of the project will help speech pathologists, both those who are new to this field or new graduates, to effectively assess and ultimately contribute to ‘building the foundations for effective communication for Victorians with Behaviours of Concern who are subject to restrictive intervention’. 

The project involves four parts: 

• Part 1: A survey to explore current practices of speech pathologists when assessing people with Behaviours of Concern, and identification of future needs for building capacity in this field.
• Part 2: The identification of communication tests and evaluation resources to use when assessing someone with Behaviours of Concern, covering the relevant domains required (focusing on school age children and adults).
• Part 3: The development of a pilot training workshop for speech pathologists about assessing people with behaviours of concern.
• Part 4: Implementation of a research project to analyse the effectiveness of the Assessment Kit in supporting speech pathologists to carry out a communication assessment with people with Behaviours of Concern.

A report outlining the process and outcomes will be prepared at the completion of the project .

Where to from here?

Speech Pathologists are invited to read about what has taken place, explore the tests and investigate those you think are of use, navigate through the resources and look at the training package provided.

Please note: The training package provided is not a self study package- but has much useful information and contacts. Further support and training is advised before embarking on assessment in this field.

For further information about the kit or training workshops please contact the Communication Resource Centre (9843 2000).