Lidcombe News Edition 31st - Montreal Fluency

for clinicians. Unfortunately, to date many German colleagues feel
overwhelmed by English written textbooks and articles, and consequently
reject reading these. Therefore, most of the Speech-Language Pathologists
attending the workshops in Germany do not acquire the Lidcombe Program
textbook by Onslow, Harrison and Packman (2003), thereby lacking a great
resource for treatment. We hope a German textbook covering the Lidcombe
Program for clinicians will close this gap. We maintain information about the
Lidcombe Program, a schedule of upcoming workshops and a referral list for
clinicians trained in LPTC workshops on our website at www.lattermann.net.
One of the great advantages of the Lidcombe Program is the broad evidence
base supporting its efficacy and efficiency. In Germany there is a lack of
studies analysing the efficacy of early stuttering intervention. During the last
five decades, to the best of my knowledge, only two studies were published in
this area (Pape-Neumann, Bosshardt, Natke, & Oertle 2004; Randoll, 1988).
The offer to set up a randomised controlled trial to investigate the impact of
the Lidcombe Program on early stuttering in German-speaking preschoolers
therefore was a great opportunity to collect data and start building an
evidence-based support system to establish the method in Germany. In the
next edition of the Lidcombe News I shall provide a short overview of the
study outcome with German preschoolers, which has been published in the
Journal of Fluency Disorders (Lattermann, Euler, & Neumann, 2008).
Looking back on the last seven years, starting with our first email exchange in
2001 and a vague idea about introducing the Lidcombe Program to German
colleagues Anna, Bettina and I have come a long way. We have certainly
learned a lot during this journey and are still learning. The Lidcombe Program
Trainers Consortium is a great resource and stimulates ongoing discussions
about further development of the Lidcombe Program based on all of our
experiences and the feedback provided by trained colleagues. In the context
of our plans, Follow-Up Days in Germany will certainly become a focus of
attention for the years to come. We seem to have managed to lay foundations
and get the Lidcombe Program going in Germany, nevertheless, there is still
more work to do: We are looking forward to it!
References
Harris, V., Onlsow, M., Packman, A., Harrison, E., & Menzies, R. (2002). An
experimental investigation of the impact of the Lidcombe Program on
early stuttering. Journal of Fluency Disorders, 27, 203 - 214.
Lattermann, C., Euler, H.A., & Neumann, K. (2008). A randomized control trial
to investigate the impact of the Lidcombe Program on early stuttering in
German-speaking preschoolers. Journal of Fluency Disorders, 33, 52 –
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Onslow, M., Packman, A., & Harrison, E. (2003). The Lidcombe Program of
Early Stuttering Intervention. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.
Pape-Neumann, J., Bosshardt, H. G., Natke, U., & Oertle, H. (2004). Testphase
of the German program for the evaluation of stuttering therapies
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