Education Queensland provides speech-language therapy services for Carina State School speech-language impaired students. A Speech-language pathologist (SLP) includes Carina State School in her circuit of local schools.
If there are concerns about a student's speech and/or language, a referral to the speech-language pathologist may be warranted. Speech-language impairment may result in one or more of the following. The student has significant difficulties:
being able to speak (or may have speech that is very hard to understand)
making sense of speech sounds
being able to understand others
being able to say what he or she wants
using language to interact socially.
We have referral processes where parents and teachers provide background information and complete a referral form. All referral forms need to be signed by the parent and by the principal. We have special needs committees to assist in this process.
Our SLP visits our school several times each term to see students whom the school has identified as having special needs. The SLP provides an array of services, which can include advice to teachers and parents, input into curriculum and programming, assessment, individual and group therapy, and parent or teacher programs.
Parents can also access speech-language therapy services from Queensland Health (Queensland public hospitals and health care facilities, Child and Youth Mental Health Services), Speech-language pathologists or private speech pathologists.