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SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
E-zine January – February 2017
PINTREST
Hanen SPARK Communication
Workshop
What’s in this issue? Ethics Q & A
SASLHA Connecting
Africa
Where are our
Community
Service
Therapists?
KZN Breakfast
Club
ASHA Award Winner:
Professor Mershen Pillay
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
EDITORIAL JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2017
Message from the PR and Marketing Committee
With 2017 off to a racing start, SASLHA continues to work for you.
This issue features some exciting new projects spear headed by SASLHA members - from
connecting local Audiologists and Speech Therapists to broadening our African
connections and making our mark on the international scene!
SASLHA celebrates the hard work and contributions of Audiologists and Speech
Therapists in South Africa and encourages all to get involved to make their mark.
Have you made a difference in your community? If you wish to share your stories please
contact the PR and Marketing.
PR and Marketing Committee
Should you wish to contribute to the E-zine in any way contact the PR &
Marketing committee.
Feedback about this issue will be greatly appreciated.
Please email: [email protected]
SASLHA & Social Media
Have you seen SASLHA’s Pinterest and Facebook pages?
Join the conversation today!
https://www.facebook.com/Saslha-839763076138617/
https://www.pinterest.com/SASLHA1
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
ASHA Award Winner:
Professor Mershen Pillay
Interview with Professor Mershen Pillay by Sophia Venter
Tell our members more about the award that ASHA gave you.
I am on the Board of Directors of the International Dysphagia
Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI). The American Speech and
Hearing Association (ASHA) recognized our work with a
Certificate of Recognition for Outstanding Contributions in
International Achievement. I am quite honoured with this award,
which was presented at the ASHA conference in November
2016. This award is the result of many years of work which resulted in the development of a
framework to guide people with modifying dysphagia foods to do this using scientifically
valid methods and a great classification system. I have learned so much through this project
because of working with people all over world, and with something that has such a large
global impact.
You have worked in various countries and serve on various international committees.
What made you come back to South Africa and work here?
I love South Africa. This is certainly a unique place with probably the most fertile context for
engaging issues of transformation or change - where we do things like deeply examine our
usefulness to people. For example, one of the projects I am working in is with the informal
sector, the largest occupational sector in SA, is with street traders in eThekwini’s Warwick
markets. These self-employed street traders play very loud music. Many have complex
health histories being HIV positive and/or with TB – and using ototoxic medications. They
are also exposed to carbon dioxide fumes from being amongst the city’s traffic. Some
smoke, drink alcohol and are exposed to various ototoxic chemicals like bitumen from road
work or solvents from paints – all of which destroys their hearing. Combine these various
factors with music, meant to attract people to their stalls, played from 5am to late at night!
Of course, these workers are the products of an occupational and larger health care system
that has ignored them as citizens. Because of being non-citizens over many generations,
this population typifies the ugly effects of apartheid and colonialism. Therefore, we cannot
merely work with these traders using traditional clinical method without working with the
social, economic and related political elements too. It is especially this political awareness
that has made me, as an audiologist, see the messiness of illness and disease. As a result I
have experienced an amazing shift in thinking about how we provide hearing care services
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
within this informal occupational environment. It allowed me to develop a practice I now
call ‘socio-sonic audiology’ to address things like the social and political nature of audiology
practice in a post-1994 context. This is something that I would never have engaged
elsewhere in the world and, for me, is now shifting how audiology should operate even on a
global stage.
As part of your SASLHA portfolio, you are in the process of compiling a book which will be
beneficial to Speech Language therapists and Audiologists. What is your main aim with
this book?
This will be our first real attempt at providing national practice guidelines, as an association
representing both audiologists and speech therapists, to develop what we do. In part this
will contribute toward developing, maybe even challenging, national practice standards so
that we ‘do local’ (contextually relevant) practices. If I see another translated test from
America or a method trialled on other culture or languages being squeezed to fit into
African lives, I will probably snap! It is time we stopped relying on knowledge and practices
from North America or Europe that are uncritically beamed like satellite TV via our
professional training or texts into South African hospitals, clinics, schools and other practice
sites. This book will shift our reliance, our validation of what is really not ‘ours’ toward a
more South African practice for South Africans and written by South Africans.
When are you at your happiest?
When I’m eating and drinking!
Who are your local speech and language therapist and or audiology heroes?
Harsha Kathard never ceases to amaze me from when I was her undergraduate student to
when we wrote our first paper together and even now as she leads health professional
education at UCT. She is truly and selflessly invested in transformation of health care. In the
last few years of working in Durban, Zandile Peter at King Edward VIII hospital in KZN has
earned my respect as someone who strives to work at creating excellence in the public
sector – and is certainly my local hero for both Audiology and Speech Therapy!
For more information about the IDDSI go to http://iddsi.org/about-us/iddsi-board/
Professor Mershen Pillay serves as Chairperson of the Research Developmemnt Portfolio
of SASLHA.
SASLHA – Working for you.
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
Where are our Community Service Therapists?
Welcome to 2017 and a new adventure for our recently graduated colleagues. Community
service is a year of learning and experience unlike any that one experiences at University. I
personally loved my community service year. Each year the 4th year students enter the
“system” and begin the process of applying for their placements of choice, hoping for the
best. Last year the fees must fall protests left many concerned about whether they would
be able to graduate on time and reach their placements. A lot of uncertainty abounds when
it comes to community service placements and then what happens once the newly
graduated therapist is placed there. Some are lucky and receive their placement of choice,
have supervisors and equipment and most importantly, patients who require SLT & A
services. (Yes, it happened to me that despite the placement of my choice and a supposed
supervisor, I had to canvas the wards and out-patient department for patients. Historically
the service was so poor and haphazard that patients just stopped coming and colleagues
stopped referring.)
Other students and new graduates do not receive their placements until the last minute. I
heard that there were students placed for community service due to start on 1 January
2017, sometime mid-January 2017. Can this be true? I really wouldn’t be surprised. Some
receive no assistance with their new portfolios and job descriptions, Stats, government
protocol, housing - the list is endless.
In my opinion, Community Service is meant to be a two-fold service that benefits both the
therapist and the community. Our new graduates should not have to struggle to find their
way through the “system”. This surely detracts from their ability and time to provide
service delivery to patients in need and also takes away from their learning experiences in a
clinical and professional environment.
I would like to ask members to send me feedback about their community service
experiences - the good and the bad. SASLHA would like to make contact with as many
community service therapists as possible. Unfortunately, we do not get given a list of
therapists to contact, we have to find them, or wait for them to sign up. If you know of any
community service therapists, please ask them to sign up with SASLHA. It is free for
Community Service year and we will assist them to the best of our abilities with SLT & A
professional issues. Any interested parties should email [email protected] for
information on how to register or visit our website www.saslha.co.za
Please let us know where our community service therapists are.
Lastly, it is essential that we understand as a profession, what our new graduates are being
required to work with or through. Many of these therapists join private practice after
community service year. Currently we have a shortage of therapists and posts in the
government sector. One of the biggest challenges that therapists in government face is
frozen posts. This is a complex issue, but in short, a contributing factor is that the monthly
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
stats show that at district hospital XYZ the two therapists employed saw 30 patients for the
month. Thus government receives these figures and decides that for two therapists to see
30 patients in a month at a district hospital the number of therapists is obviously sufficient.
What the stats don’t show is how many patients are at risk for Speech and Language delays
due to prematurity and low birth weight, or hearing loss in the TB population, etc. In short,
the stats reflect how many patients were seen not how many patients could benefit from
the system. This is certainly the case in my Zone. Perhaps it is different in other Zones? I
would be interested in feedback on stats from the government therapists in other Zones.
This has the knock-on effect that no new posts are opened. In turn, this means that our
graduates are forced into the Private Sector, even if they wish to stay on in the government
sector, as posts in their areas are frozen. Therefore, I would like to reach out to our
community service therapists and government sector therapists - please consider joining
SASLHA so that we can join together to accurately reflect the service delivery needs and
assist in the government sector. We have a Public Sector Portfolio that is working on these
issues.
I look forward to comments and feedback. Where are our 2017 Com Servs?
Kathryn Farmer
28 February, 2017 Tzaneen.
Image from: http://southafrica.bedandbreakfasts.net/maps/sa-regions.gif
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
KZN BREAKFAST CLUB
Durbanites are not known for being
good attendees of functions – this is
the reason stated for why Durban
does not attract big artists, training,
etc. On the 18th of February 2017
Durban SLT/A’s proved the
stereotype wrong. To be fair, not all
of the 35 odd attendees were from
Durban. We had therapists who
travelled from Pietermaritzburg and
Empangeni to attend the first KZN
breakfast club.
The topic of the morning was the International Dysphagia
Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI) and the
implementation of it in KZN. Professor Mershen Pillay
(who serves on the IDDSI board) entertained the group
with his usual charm and wealth of knowledge regarding
the IDDSI. Nishana Saman encouraged discussion
regarding the implementation of the IDDSI in Kwa-Zulu
Natal. Using the experiences of UK therapists who have
already implemented the IDDSI, issues relevant to the
South African context were discussed. Interested
therapists were asked to put down their names to form a
KZN task force to implement the IDDSI in KZN.
The therapists who attended were very keen to continue meeting on a regular basis and
were very excited about the future of the KZN breakfast club. A community service
therapist realised that she was not as isolated as she feels, as there were a few therapists in
the room who work in the government sector within close proximity to her. The offers of
guidance from these therapists were greatly appreciated by our newly qualified colleague.
Private sector therapists were able to meet colleagues who they knew of, but had never
met. There are meetings planned for the rest of the year and topics will vary to address the
diversity of needs indicated by the attendees.
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
Have you hosted an event to share the knowledge amongst your
colleagues?
Tell us about it.
Sophia Venter
SASLHA – working for you.
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
SASLHA CONNECTING AFRICA
The African Connections Project
In recent years SASLHA has increasingly been speaking about connecting with the therapists
working in Africa, which culminated in a Skype meeting at the SASLHA conference in
October 2016, in which the handful of people we knew about at the time were invited to
participate. They expressed a need for contact with other therapists working in Africa,
warning about barriers such as access to the internet and the cost of data.
A committee was then established under the Public Liaison Officer portfolio of Ingrid von
Bentheim, consisting of me, Erika Bostock, who was later nominated to chair the
committee, Melissa Bortz, Mershen Pillay and later, Shajila Singh. The mission of the project
is to raise the profile of our professions in Africa and improve access to the services we
offer as a profession, by supporting therapists working in Africa and providing a platform to
communicate and share ideas, challenges, solutions and opportunities. (If you’re wondering
where the name of the project comes from, it started off as a reference to the African
Connections radio programme that plays African music on SAFM on Saturdays between
13h00 and 15h00.) The committee started off by sending out an email to the 28 therapists
who were known to SASLHA from the conference, explaining the idea of the project and
asking them to send in the contact details they had of anyone working in the fields of
Speech Therapy and Audiology in Africa. Emails were also sent out to SASLHA members and
selected university staff who we thought might be able to assist or who might be
interested. The feedback was incredible; by December we had the email addresses of over
120 therapists working in 20 African countries. We also compiled a database form and sent
it out to everyone on 6 December, and have received 33 completed forms back.
In January the committee had a meeting to discuss the long-term goals of the project, and
came up with the following:
2017: Mershen Pillay and I would attend the 6th East African International Conference on
Communication Disabilities in Nairobi in February to make face-to-face contact with African
delegates at the conference and discuss the project with them. By the end of the year we
want to have a database in the form of a map of Africa, indicating basic information on the
profile of all the countries in Africa. This will be linked to the SASLHA website and therapists
will be able to update or add information about themselves and their countries to keep the
information current. Over time we intend to add more in-depth information, but the basics
will be put in place during the course of this year. We also want to start the communication
forum for all the therapists and others who are interested.
2018: We intend to establish a professional development support system and to launch an
African association for speech and hearing therapy at the World Conference on Audiology,
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
which will be a joint conference between SASLHA, the ENT association and SAAA in
October.
2019: Establish an African research and resource database
2021: Hold, somewhere in Africa, an independent African conference on speech and
hearing therapy.
SASLHA funded Mershen and me to attend the conference in Nairobi on 10 and 11
February, where we were warmly welcomed. The conference organisers gave us
opportunities to explain the project to the delegates and for them to give us ideas of where
they would like to see this project go. From the start it has been made clear that the African
Connections Project, although driven by SASLHA, is not SASLHA’s project, but is owned by
all the participants in it. I also did a presentation of the state of the professions in Africa,
based on the information given in the database forms and numerous email conversations
with members of the project. Sophia Venter had provided us with marketing items, which
were very gratefully received, with many commenting on how useful they would be:
mirrors, pens, lip-ice, hand sanitizer, etc.
On 21 February the Google-group for the African Connections members to communicate
with each other was set up and everyone with an interest in the project was invited to join
it. By 1 March there were 83 members. We plan to send out the invitations to join the
group once again, as the invitations expire within a week, and some potential members
may not have had access to the internet before the deadline was reached.
The project is already achieving some of its broader goals, such as raising the profile of the
profession, as information about the therapists who work in Kenya has been shared with
the head of Rehabilitation Medicine in Kenyatta University in Kenya, and about therapists
working in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Madagascar with an ENT in Cape Town. We
have also been able to connect therapists in Uganda and Tanzania with their colleagues in
the country and to connect French-speaking therapists with the president of FOAF, the
Federation of French Speech Therapists in Africa.
If you would like to join the project, or want more information about it, please email
Erika Bostock
Chairperson of the African Connections Project
SASLHA
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
Hanen SPARK Communication
Workshops, South Africa SPARK was developed for Early Interventionists to provide them with the strategies and
coaching framework to help children’s early language development and work with their
parents to apply these strategies at home. Hanen believes that this is a great evidence-
based professional development opportunity. Speech Language Pathologists are also
encouraged to take this workshop, which is based on Hanen's It Takes Two to Talk®. This
workshop covers all of the intervention strategies and parent coaching methods and
framework as It Takes Two to Talk, except that it does not certify you to offer or run
the Hanen Parent Program. All of these strategies, however, can be used immediately after
the workshop in your one-to-one clinical practices!
If you work with young children who have expressive and/or receptive language delays, join Hanen for this exciting new training to enhance the support you offer to children and their families! When you take SPARK Communication workshop, you get:
Research-based responsive interaction strategies – drawn from the world-renowned It Takes Two to Talk® Program – that have been shown to accelerate children’s language use and communication development
A coaching framework for involving and teaching parents so they play a key role in facilitating their child’s early communication development
Concrete plans for applying the SPARK coaching framework and interaction strategies with the families on their caseload
A comprehensive set of resources to structure, plan and implement SPARK strategies with families (valued at over $100)
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
Hanen SPARK Communication
Workshop – Pretoria
To register for the Hanen SPARK Communication workshop in Pretoria go to:
http://www.hanen.org/Professional-Development/SPARK-Communication-
Workshop/2017-Apr-08-Pretoria-South-Africa.aspx?clientcache=0
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
Hanen SPARK Communication
Workshop – Cape Town
To register for the Hanen SPARK Communication Workshop in Cape Town go to:
http://www.hanen.org/Professional-Development/SPARK-Communication-
Workshop/2017-Apr-11-Cape-Town-South-Africa.aspx
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
SASLHA on PINTEREST
IDDSI – DYSPHAGIA DIET FRAMEWORK
https://za.pinterest.com/pin/520025088209897118/
Join SASLHA on
https://za.pinterest.com/SASLHA1/
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
SASLHA CONTACT DETAILS
PORTFOLIO NAME EMAIL
ADMINISTRATION JUDITH KOWU [email protected]
PRESIDENT URSULA ZSILAVECZ
VICE PRESIDENT ALISON DENT [email protected]
TREASURER ANNALINE JACK [email protected]
PROFESSIONAL LIASION OFFICER
INGRID VON BENTHEIM
ETHICS AND STANDARDS CHAIRPERSON
ALISON DENT [email protected]
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OFFICER
MELISSA BORTZ [email protected]
RESEACH DEVELOPMENT OFFICER
MERSHEN PILLAY [email protected]
CODING CHARIPERSON PRIYA RAJARAM [email protected]
PUBLIC SECTOR REPRESENTATIVE
HELEENA VAN HEERDEN
PR AND MARKETING CHAIRPERSON
SOPHIA VENTER [email protected]
ZONE1(Johannesburg/Southern Gauteng/ Free State/North West Province)
MONIQUE RALL [email protected]
ZONE 2 (Pretoria/Northern Gauteng/ Mpumalanga/ Limpopo)
KATHRYN FARMER [email protected]
ZONE 3 (Western Cape/ Northern Cape)
NASREEN ALLIE [email protected]
ZONE 4 (Kwa-Zulu Natal/ Eastern Cape)
DENISE KEMSLEY [email protected]
SASLHA EZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
See you next time!