Dr Helen Grech, co-ordinator of the B.Sc. (Hons) Communication Therapy course, wrote a distinguished report for this year's annual report of the Institute of Health Care.
Dr Grech wrote that speech therapy in Malta has proliferated in the past two decades. Patterns of service for the communication disordered and local education in logopedics have developed to address local needs, culture and circumstances.
The report provides an overview of the expansion in the number of trained staff, caseloads and mode of service delivery. The development of the local Communication Therapy training programme is also discussed. Various strategies are reported as having been adopted by the teaching establishment to ensure and maintain the preparation of competent and accountable practitioners, as recognised by the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics.
The success in training is perceived as being the result of the collaborative approach adopted with local service providers and expatriate colleagues. Strategic plans to strengthen the profession and service provision are also discussed.
Longitudinal data collection about service provision is considered important to examine changes that would need to be addressed in planning future services. Dr Grech examined the expansion in service providers and the alteration in the caseload and mode of service delivery as well as the evolution of the training programme. She attempts at estimating the number of speech-language pathologists required to service the local population.
The report also addresses strategic planning for training speech therapists in the next five years. This is supported by the calculated workforce and skill mix required to provide the speech therapy service locally; the assumption that the University of Malta will continue providing the training of these practitioners; and the local policy for prioritising preventive and primary care. This planning approach provides a more appropriate method of determining service training needs than an ad hoc method.
A full-time training course in Speech Pathology and Therapeutics was initiated in Malta in 1977 under the auspices of British Overseas Development Aid. The University of Malta took up the education and training of SLPs in 1991, with the help of expatriate colleagues from Ireland, UK and the US.
The undergraduate training course is a four-year full-time programme leading to the award of B.Sc. (Hons) in Communication Therapy. Eligibi-lity to register and practise as a speech-language pathologist in Malta is subject to having this qualification or its equivalence.
A decade after its birth, the Communication Therapy Division prides itself on its achievement of a high standard in the education of autonomous, caring and accountable practitioners. It has been reported that the local training of SLPs is comparable to that of other reputable European schools of speech therapy.
Although the training programme is still dependent on service from expatriate experts, this dependence is diminishing since a number of Maltese qualified practitioners have already obtained postgraduate qualifications in various areas of language pathology.
Strategies such as sending students on overseas placements, inviting overseas experts to run obligatory courses for students and in clinical teaching for practitioners, engagement in European staff and student exchange programmes and the establishment of a teaching and research clinic within the University of Malta have been adopted to provide adequate training.