In Malaysia, people are still wondering what Speech Language Therapy is compared to other developed countries such as as United States, Australia, United Kingdom and New Zealand. It is a new or still-developing course in a Malaysia which there is only 3 universities that provide this courses which are Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and Universiti Islam Antarabangsa (UIA). Speech Language Therapist role is to prevent, assess, diagnose and treat speech, language, communication as well as swallowing disorder in children and adults.1They can work at various sectors for instance hospitals, rehabilitation centres, nursing homes as well as public and private schools. In schools, one of their roles are giving guidance to teacher regarding awareness in language, speech and communication disorder including effective method during lessons.2 There are a few constraints in the speech language therapy services in school in Malaysia and future directions of this field that hoping to be turned to a better phase in a future.
First and foremost, one of the challenges to the speech language therapy service in school in Malaysia is lack of up-skilling training to the therapist. As mentioned earlier, our country are still new in this field, therefore, only plenty of special education-related training programmes and workshop as well as teaching aids can be provided to the therapist as less number of expert in our country. So, government should allocate some allocation to invite experts in speech language therapy from other countries that can help our therapist or regular teachers with training that can enhanced their expertise in identifying students with cognitive and physical learning disabilities. As a consequence, they can make better improvement in our education system. To conclude, it shows that it is important to provide therapist with extra training such as workshop, seminar and talk to enhance their knowledge and at the same time improve their skills.
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Next difficulties of speech language therapy services in school in Malaysia is shortage of therapist that can serve people with speech, language or communication problems. According to Dr Hasherah, Speech Science Lecturer in UKM, currently Malaysia only has about 300 speech therapist with 58 served in government hospitals while the rest worked in private hospitals or non-governmental organisations such as National Stroke Assosiation of Malaysia. The ratio of one speech therapist per 100,000 (1:100,000) in Malaysia which was far behind other countries such as United States which had ratio of 41:100,000.3 Furthermore, according to the data from Ministry of Education shows increasing number of students enrolment in Special Education Integrated Programme (SEIP) from 23104 students in 2010 to 28455students in 2013.4 With this data, it strongly proved that Malaysia is still lack of speech therapist that can help or serve those who have problems related to speech, language or communication especially special needs students.
Future direction of Speech Language Therapy in Malaysia is should be known or common to the public especially parents and students. One of the way to attract more students to pursue in speech language therapy courses is by increasing awareness on the subject and profession. For example, it can be done by talk, forum and campaign through mass media. Moreover, an infographic poster that explains about the percentage of diseases related to speech and language problem as well as the number of speech therapist in Malaysia would help a lot to explain about the importance of this profession in our country. Government and relevant parties should create strategies to provide more knowledge about varieties of professions under Health Science to the youth in order to attract them in pursuing studies in this field.
In overseas, they do have speech therapist in mainstream schools but in Malaysia therapist do works in special education school such as Pusat Perkhidmatan Pendidikan Khas (3PK) only not in mainstream schools. Government have to do the revolution in our education needs such as hiring speech therapist for every school permanently. Speech therapist can assess and provide intervention to children with speech, language and communication disorder that might affect their educational performance. So, as a speech therapist they can help the teachers to handle the special need students such as students with learning disabilities in the right way without interrupting the classroom activities as they are trained to do so. As we know, students with learning disability can perform better just the same as other students but they required extra attention. At the beginning, our education system must invest more money in order to hire teacher aides for such special needs students in mainstream school even it costs much money. However, it is worth to invest as the guidance from speech therapist would help teachers in making teaching and learning process become more effective.
In a conclusion, Malaysian still need to increase their awareness about speech language therapy field. This is because without this knowledge they would not know whom to refer with when they have a problem related to speech, language, communication and swallowing problems. For instance, some of parents who has child with speech and language delay had never known or take it lightly about the issues. In some factors, if the issues not take in account, the delay will become worse, as consequence it may affect their child’s social interactions, behaviour and academic skills. Misconceptions and misinformation regarding the roles and services of speech therapist exist in families, teachers and other healthcare professionals need to be addressed at various platforms. I hope that communication across healthcare professionals in Malaysia can be improved in order to enhance patient outcome and reduce medical errors.
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