The transition from DEI and cultural competence – which includes understanding and attempt to respond to differences in the language, culture and home environment of children – may have a detrimental effect at a time when more are needed to achieve and support multilingual learners, several experts and speech pathologists said.
They told me about some promising strategies for strengthening speech services for multilingual babies, children and pre-school children with delays in speech-all, which includes a strong reading of DEI and cultural competence.
Embrace the creative staff
The Navajo Nation faces a severe shortage of trained staff to evaluate and work with young children with a delay in development, including speech. Thus, in 2022, Alison-Babank and his research team began to provide training in speech and therapy for local family coaches who already work with families through a tribal program to visit the home. Family coaches provide speech support until a more permanent solution is found, Alison-Burbank said.
Home visit programs are “unused resources for people like me who are trying to have a wider range to identify these children and get intermediate services,” he said. (The presence of a home visit program and speech therapy is under a serious threat due to federal cuts, including Medicaid.)
Use language tests that are designed for multilingual populations
Decades ago, if any of the exams used to diagnose speech delays was “normal”-or pre-tested to establish expectations and indicators-not-English speakers.
For example, a few years ago, early childhood intervention programs were needed in Texas to use an instrument that relies on English norms for the diagnosis of Spanish -speaking children, said Ellen Kester, founder and president of bilingual speech services and language services in Austin, which provides as well as direct services for families in the school. “We saw an increase in the diagnosis of many young (Spanish) children,” she said. This is not because all the children had a delay in speech, but because of the main differences between the two languages, which were not reflected in the design and evaluation of the test. (In Spanish, for example, the “Z” sound is pronounced as English.
Now there are more options than ever on screenmen and tools regulated for a multilingual, diverse population; Countries, agencies and school districts must be electoral and informed, looking for them and insisting on continuous improvement.
Expansion of learning-official and self-initiative-for speech therapists in the best ways to work with a varied population
In the long run, the best way to help smaller children is to hire more stupid speech therapists through a stable DEI effort. But in the short term, the speakers cannot rely solely on translators – if a person is even available – to contact multilingual children.
This means using resources that destroy the main differences in the structure, pronunciation and use between English and language spoken by the family, Kester said. “As therapists, we need to know the models of languages and what should be expected and what cannot be expected,” Kester said.
It is also crucial for therapists to understand how cultural norms can vary, especially when teaching parents and careful care to support their children, said Katarin Zuckerman, a professor and associate head of the General Pediatrics at the Oregon Health and Scientific University.
“This idea that parents sit on the floor and play with the kid and teach them how to talk is a very American cultural idea,” she said. “In many communities, this does not work that way.”
In other words, in order to help the child, therapists must perceive an idea that is suddenly under siege: cultural competence,
Quick Acceptance: Appropriate studies
In recent years, several studies have been involved in how state -owned early intervention systems serve children with a delay in age development, born through 3, multilingual children with speech challenges. One exploration Based on Oregon and co-authored Zuckerman, he found that speech diagnoses for Spanish-speaking children are often less specific than for English speakers. Instead of setting a certain challenge, Spanish speakers tend to receive the general marking “Language Slavery”. This makes it difficult to connect families to the most common and useful therapies.
Second exploration They find that speech pathologists routinely miss critical steps when evaluating multilingual children for early intervention. This can lead to over -diagnosis, insufficient diagnosis and inappropriate help. “These findings indicate the critical need for increased preparation of reprofessional and strong intercession … To provide evaluations based on evidence and evaluation of the EI and family, culturally responsive interventions for children of any origin,” the authors concluded.
Carr is an associate in Nova America, focused on early childhood reporting.
Contact the editor of this story, Christina Samuels, on 212-678-3635, via a signal in cas.37 or samuels@hechingerreport.orgS
