Another Blunder Down Under

For Immediate Release

Contact: Greg Wilson

greg@curleycompany.com
(571) 239-7474 

Jane Fraser, president of the Stuttering Foundation, issued the following statement concerning a proposal by Speech Pathology Australia to the Australian government to exclusively back a single stuttering treatment approach for government reimbursement: 

“Australia’s professional association for speech pathology has recently submitted a proposal to the Australian government seeking to provide reimbursement for only a single type of stuttering treatment, creating a ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy for treating pre-school children who stutter. We find this proposal unthinkable and strongly oppose any policy action to limit choices to a single method by controlling government reimbursements for healthcare practitioners in any field. We see this type of policy shift as obstructing the development of new approaches to stuttering treatment in the future.

We can’t imagine a policy that limits a cardiologist, an oncologist, or a surgeon by controlling reimbursements to one single approach for all patients — why limit Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs)? We see this as a dangerous precedent in the healthcare field and strongly encourage the stuttering community and the broader medical community to call for Speech Pathology Australia to abandon this misguided proposal to insure that neither Australia nor any other country or entity consider amending their approach in the same manner.”