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October 26, 2004 - RELEASE SPEECH THERAPY BRIDGES GAP

New low cost, easily accessible, group speech therapy programme aimed at empowering parents announced.

Release Speech Therapy, a new organisation aimed at addressing the accessibility of speech and language therapy was launched today. Release Speech Therapy will provide speech and language therapy to parents of and children with learning and speech disabilities through group therapy at a relatively low cost.* There are currently 30,000 people including children waiting for speech and language therapy in Ireland.

Aiming to alleviate the severe lack of service, and to empower parents with the knowledge to work with their child on a day-to-day basis, Release is centred around teaching the parents the skills they need to help their child. Release aims to help 2,600 families by 2008.

The service is aimed at parents of children (0 - 16 years of age) who have a difficulty with communication. Release students do not need to have an intellectual or physical disability to attend class. Classes will begin enrolling from today and will start in January. Although the pilot is Dublin based, should there be demand in other areas, Release will endeavour to meet this need - classes are open to everyone, their focus and number will be demand driven.

"Initially I was sceptical, now however after examining the model further I think it is excellent, particularly given the terrible shortage of speech and language therapists in Ireland, said Deirdre Carroll, secretary general of namhi (The National Association for Intellectual Disability). "Release is a very good, innovative idea to bridge the gap, it offers hope to families who may have had to go down the private route or wait up to three years for screening. The model is very innovative, it will give parents a great support infrastructure, providing children from an early age with good language acquisition tools."

"We will certainly be making all of the parents involved in our organisation aware of Release. I don't know of any other service like this in Ireland and certainly anything that can effectively bridge the gap here is welcome," continued Carroll.

Commenting on the current situation**, Tara Liston the founder of Release said, "Irish speech language therapists have done an amazing job with the resources available to them and the massive case loads they have to manage. I am hoping that Release will begin to ease some of this pressure and start to make an impact on the waiting lists they deal with on a daily basis."

Best Practice
Release has appointed Jennifer Wetter as director of its organisation. She is tasked with the overall development and implementation of the programme, incorporating world-wide best practice from assessment through group therapy. Following Jennifer will come further US therapists and after that practicing interns from Ireland and the US - the aim being to have, at the end of three years, helped over 2,600 families receive speech and language therapy.

"There is such a huge deficit in speech therapists in Ireland that there is no way for any one person to give every child exactly what they need at a low cost. Instead, we need to teach the parents, who know their child best, how to effectively promote communication in their home," said Jennifer Wetter, director of Release.

"While many other programs stress the need to involve parents in the communication process, we have evolved this into a programme where parents have the support of the speech therapists and other parents, learning techniques and strategies to enhance their child's communication skills while meeting other parents and care givers who are fighting the same uphill battle," continued Wetter.

While some children will still need one to one assistance, recent experience demonstrates that the group therapy model better assists the family unit, empowering parents to help their own children in a very effective manner.

"I believe that Release will provide a terrific and much needed service, it will not only open another channel to parents but also through its highly qualified US therapists add new ideas," said Yvonne Cunningham, psychologist. "The director of the service for example specialises in Autism, a service which because of the nature of intervention can sometimes be difficult to access and also a long and complex journey."

Release estimates that most of its classes will be attended by children with Autism or Down syndrome. It will however also offer services for children with other communication needs e.g. delayed speech, PDD (Pervasive Development Disorder), stuttering etc. Release will match the language ability of a child with similar children so the pace of learning is constant and at the very least parents will get functioning ideas from interaction with other parents in the same situation.

Speaking at the launch of the service, Ann Haig, an early intervention specialist said, "One thing I particularly like about the Release approach is the group model, it provides a relaxed and fun context for language acquisition. There is no pressure to perform, if a child wants to sit back and watch she can and she is still taking everything in. This is particularly good in the case of Down syndrome. I am putting my money where my mouth is and enrolling my daughter."

Commitment
Release is not a day care service, it is not a process that has all the answers. For it to make an impact it will require hard work and diligence on the part of the therapist, parent and the child. Every parent who enrols in Release will be required to participate in the one hour class each week, and complete a half hour of homework each day.

Commenting on the cost of the service, Tara Liston said, " The Health Boards have been extremely positive towards Release but for the moment the costs for us to run the service will unfortunately rest with parents. We are continuing our negotiations with the Health Boards and are hoping for a positive outcome."

Each class will cost €33 which is significantly lower than Industry costs which stand between €100-€145 per hour.*