Lidcombe News Edition 31st - Montreal Fluency

the courses went down well with the majority (though not all and there are still
many who remain sceptical) of the thirty or so clinicians, and soon a demand
for more training was evident. Around this time the Lidcombe News was born
(May 1998, see Lidcombe News edition 12 for a brief history) and it was Sue
O’Brian who was our first agony aunt, though the ‘Dear Sue’ position in this
newsletter has now for many years been taken over by the Bankstown
Stuttering Unit with Lis Harrison, Vanessa Harris and now Margaret Webber
heading up the team.
As Sue could not keep coming over to the UK to deliver the workshops, this
role was handed over to Rosemarie, Rebecca and myself. Initially the courses
were spread over five or six days- this included a follow up day- and when
they were given at the clinic bases of the three trainers they also included
some ‘live’ observation of children being treated. During this time the
popularity of the courses increased and soon the demands on our time, as
well as the expense of the course to the health service, meant that we had to
reduce the number of training days to three with one follow up day. The
publication of the hardback book ‘the Clinician’s Guide’ in 2003, the formation
of the Lidcombe Program Trainers Consortium, and the development of
excellent videos and workbooks from Australia, have ensured a presentation
which is the same worldwide. The quality of these resources, the local
support networks and a greater acceptance that direct treatment can benefit
young children who stutter, has led to our reducing the workshops to two days
in English speaking countries and three days in countries where English is not
the first language.
Since those early workshops we have noticed a change in feeling about the
LP. They are no longer the challenge, or as exhausting, as they once were!
For the most part therapists have accepted that the LP is another way of
treating early stuttering, and new graduates who have learned about it at
university now view it as an appropriate intervention for children at risk of
persistent stuttering. Most of the health Trusts in the UK have someone who
has been Lidcombe trained and it is expected that clinical leads in stuttering in
Speech and Language Therapy departments should have the Lidcombe
training under their belts. Some may favour the indirect approach as their first
choice, others may prefer the LP, but both are now seen as mainstream
therapy in the UK, with the LP having the huge advantage of a strong
evidence base which makes it easier to access funding for training. I am
sometimes asked how many clinicians we have trained over the years in the
UK and I’m afraid I don’t have any figures for this, but a guestimate would be
around 2000.
The story of the training in this country does not stop with the UK. We have
been called upon to train therapists in other countries- most particularly in
Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. The Netherlands has its own
Consortium member- Durdana Putker (email:durdana.putker@planet.nl)
and until recently so did Denmark. Lone Cordes Felby, unfortunately for us,
moved on to a new job so this position is now open to a new member. This
year we have had the privilege of travelling to Greece to train some twenty
five therapists and in the autumn we have been invited to Spain to run a
workshop there. Norway is currently advertising its own course which should
take place in April 2009, and we have also had enquiries from Italy.
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