ZANDER Reid lives in a world where his words aren’t understood, despite his dogged persistence.
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To people who don’t know the three-and-a-half-year-old Ravenswood boy, his boisterous babble is incoherent, and he gets confused and frustrated when adults smile and nod to his questions and problems.
His mother, Tish Roden, needs help.
But in Northern Tasmania an early intervention can mean a 12-month wait for children like Zander, who she fears is slowly being left behind by other children his age.
Speech Pathology Tasmania senior therapist Rosalie Martin said Zander was one of many Tasmanian children caught up in a ‘‘critical’’ situation, as the demand for speech therapy far outstripped supply.
The Examiner understands that in Northern Tasmania, pre-school children access Commonwealth-funded public services at St Giles or state-funded services through Launceston General Hospital, and once they start school they see speech therapists employed by the Education Department.
But high demand saw St Giles close its waiting list to new pre-kinder admissions by the middle of this year.
‘‘People often find themselves on public waiting lists...and by the time they actually get to the end of the waiting list, that child’s too old to be seen in that service any more,’’ Ms Martin said.
She said the number of sessions children received could also be limited due to the size of the waiting list.
In a submission to a Senate inquiry into speech pathology this year, the Department of Health and Human Services estimated 6700 children had a communication disorder, using a national incidence rate,
A limited study of 308 prep students attending 30 public schools in Northern Tasmania also found 41.2 per cent had a speech and-or a language impairment – one of the highest prevalence estimates reported to date.
Ms Roden said Zander waited about 12 months on both the St Giles and LGH waiting lists, without confirmation he had actually been included on either, only to be given just six speech pathology sessions.
She said St Giles would reassess Zander’s needs next year, but in the meantime, he still struggled to be understood.
‘‘It’s gotten to the stage where because he can’t say things he’s getting really frustrated, and when he gets frustrated he squeals, or he will throw himself down on the ground and have a meltdown, and it’s hard,’’ Ms Roden said.
‘‘Sometimes he will get a bit violent.
‘‘I’m sure he would be a lot further had he got help a lot sooner.’’
In another submission to the Senate inquiry Tasmania’s Education Department shared concerns about the number of four-year-old children with communication issues who were starting school without having received any early intervention services.
The department’s submission said demand for speech services generally had increased and that was likely to continue.
Ms Martin said the problems were a lack of funding and difficulty in recruiting speech pathologists to Tasmania, where there wasn’t a university course and the wages were lower.
She said the wait for early intervention services in Tasmania was ‘‘really frustrating’’, because its importance and effectiveness was well-documented and the potential consequences of inaction were wide-ranging.
‘‘It’s been quite sexy in the newspapers in the last 12 months to report about the 51 per cent illiteracy in Tasmania, but when you wind it right back to its root causes, literacy problems at root cause are language or speech processing problems,’’ Ms Martin said.
Studies have found mental illness is more common among people with speech and language impairments, and that 46 per cent of people in Victoria’s youth justice system had a severe language impairment.
Ms Martin said young people became very skilled at hiding their communication challenges with behaviour – something Zander already appears to be learning.
Ms Roden said she was concerned her son wasn’t ready for pre-kinder next year and that he wouldn’t be ready for school when the time came.
‘‘I don’t think he will be able to take in as much if he’s frustrated and not able to get across his point or ask any questions,’’ Ms Roden said.
‘‘And the school waiting list for speech is a whole other story.’’
Tasmanian Association of State School Parents and Friends president Jenny Eddington said she constantly heard from parents whose children waited up to 12 months for school-based services.
Belinda Capodici, of Ravenswood, said her five-year-old son, Connor Scott, had been on his school’s waiting list since the beginning of the year and she’d received no indication where he was on the list or when he would be seen.
‘‘I was hoping he would receive some help before prep, but it doesn’t look like it,’’ Ms Capodici said.
Like Zander, Connor struggles to be understood, and Ms Capodici also said it was starting to affect his behaviour.
‘‘Even I have trouble understanding him sometimes, and I have to ask him to repeat, and he just gets angry and upset,’’ she said.
‘‘He seems unhappy and I know he’s not learning as well as he could be because of his speech and language issues – I’ve been told that.’’
Speech Pathology Australia state president Alison Henty said access to speech pathologists in Tasmania varied from school to school, but it was actually better than in other parts of Australia where children could wait up to two years for early intervention services.
Mrs Henty said that didn’t make the wait in Tasmania OK.
‘‘I know there hasn’t been an increase in staffing in the education department for some years, but that sort of coincides with a lot of issues in the economy,’’ Mrs Henty said.
She said the long wait for public services was exacerbated by a lack of private speech therapists in the North and North-West.
Ms Martin, who is a private practitioner in Southern Tasmania, said she was so concerned by the situation that she last year started a charity, Chatter Matters, to explore alternate forms of service delivery that could better meet demand.
‘‘Mental health development and relationship development and all of the things that actually are the richest things about being a human being, are mediated through our communication with each other,’’ she said.
‘‘It’s really frustrating, because every day we work with families who, we know, and they know, that if they could get more they could do better.’’