Question
Hi! My name is Morgan and I’m an SLP grad student. At my school placement, my supervisor was referred by a teacher for a child who stuttered. Upon observation in a natural play situation, the child did stutter, but spoke freely with my supervisor and me, appeared unbothered by his stuttering, and did not exhibit any secondary behaviors. My supervisor took him onto her caseload, maybe because the teacher said his stuttering affected his desire to share in class, but the only strategies we worked on while I was there were “slow and easy speech” on short sentences and recognizing stuttered speech. Maybe the parents desired therapy for the child, but I was not aware of that. My question is, is it ethical or necessary for SLPs to provide therapy to “change” stuttering if a child is not yet bothered or socially affected by their stuttering. I can understand parents wanting to “get ahead” of embarrassment and stigma, but in that case I would think our job would be more focused on informational counseling about how speech differences are normal.
Dear Morgan,
HI! Thanks for asking questions and advocating for your client and your education.
I guess I have a few questions:
1. How old is the child?
2. Was a full evaluation performed?
3. What was the basis, if there was a full assessment performed, for picking up the child?
4. Can we assume their is an IEP? That is a legal document, if there is one, so that would tell you a lot of information
There are many more questions, but those are the big ones. If there was not an evaluation completed, and the child is in a public school, is the therapist formally seeing them (so is there an IEP) or are they just informally trying to get more information to do possibly do a full eval (if needed). The reason I bring up “public school” because if you are in a private setting, that is a different matter and different rules (in many cases). Again, I don’t know all of the details so I can’t say what is going on that is ethical or not. I know it is not ethical to pull a child out of classes without a process being followed (screening a child, evaluations, formal therapy, IEP, observing, etc).
Sorry, it is hard to make ethical comments about a case that we know very little about.
Let me know if you want to talk more about this.
With compassion and kindness,
Scott