Speech Therapy in Australia.

By Miss Olive Abotomey, B.A., L.C.S.T., Speech Therapist to the Education Department of South Australia and Lecturer in Phonetics at the Adelaide Teachers' College.

The first important step in establishing speech therapy in Australia was in 1931, when the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in Sydney opened a Speech Clinic under the direction of Sir Robert Wade and Miss Elinor Wray. The growth of this clinic and the part it has played as a centre for the training of students has been one of the most important influences in the development of speech therapy in Australia.

In 1932 the Australian Council for Educational Research published Defects of Speech in School Children, by H. T. Parker, the result of an investigation carried out in Tasmanian State Schools and in Melbourne; in 1933 Mrs. T. Cherry conducted a Speech Clinic for children at the Legacy Club, for about eighteen months.

In 1934 the University of Adalaide nominated Miss Olive Abotomey for a free passage to Great Britain (awarded by the Australian and New Zealand Passenger Conference) to study phonetics and speech therapy; and in 1935 the Adelaide Children's Hospital appointed Mr. and Mrs. J. Anderson as honorary speech therapists.

In 1939 Miss Elinor Wray and a Medical Advisory Committee under the auspices of the New South Wales Hospitals Commission, inaugurated the first training course for speech therapists in Australia at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, and in 1939 the Education Department of South Australia appointed Miss Olive Abotomey to organise a Speech Therapy Clinic in the Medical Branch of the Department.

The closing years of the war saw further advances. In 1944 an Australian Association of Speech Therapists was formed by Miss Wray and other speech therapists in New South Wales, to maintain a high professional standard. Its membership now includes speech therapists practising in four states. In 1945, in Victoria, the Provisional Council of Speech Therapy appointed Miss Margaret Badcock to organise a course of training and to supervise the Speech Therapy Clinic at the Melbourne Children's Hospital.

In South Australia in 1944 the British Medical Association invited the Speech Therapist of the Education Department to address a meeting at the Royal Adelaide Hospital on “Speech Therapy.” Two parliamentary inquiries were appointed, in Education in 1945, and in Medicine in 1946, and the Speech Therapist of the Education Department was called to give evidence relating to speech therapy in Australia.

In 1946 the Twenty-fifth Meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science was held in Adelaide and a Speech Sciences Unit was formed by members of the University of Adelaide and the Education Department of South Australia. The programme of this unit represented the main scientific studies involved in the study of speech and its disorders. One of the most valuable results of this Speech Sciences Unit was the link between Australia and other countries, especially Great Britain and New Zealand.

In Australia the most important influences in the development of speech therapy have come from Great Britain, formerly through the British Society of Speech Therapists and, since its formation in 1944, through the College of Speech Therapists, which is the sole body responsible for the training and professional activities of speech therapists in Great Britain. Australians will recall with pride that Mr. Lionel Logue, C.V.O., F.C.S.T., formerly of Adelaide, was a foundation member of both these societies and that his work in speech therapy in London has been recognised by His Majesty the King.

In Australia there are at present six members of the College of Speech Therapists, and the development of speech therapy in at least three states has been directly due to the efforts of members of the College. The training courses, in Sydney and Melbourne, are based on the syllabus of the College and it is expected that all future developments will follow closely the pattern set by the College of Speech Therapists.

N.B.—Since this paper was written there have been the following new developments: In Perth, the formation of a Provisional Advisory Committee of