Icelandic speech-language pathologists’ practices with multilingual and linguistically diverse children and adults
Background: Immigration to Iceland has increased with the number of multilingual clients seen by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) growing alongside this. Little is known about the proportion of multilingual children on SLPs’ caseloads and SLPs’ knowledge, skills, and practices when serving multilingual clients and their families.
Aim: This study sheds light on how practising SLPs in Iceland work with multilingual children and adults.
Method/approach: An online survey was distributed to all active members of the Icelandic Association for Speech and Language Therapists. The survey included items on attitudes towards multilingualism, the composition of their caseloads, assessment and intervention practices with multilingual clients, and barriers and facilitators to practice with multilingual clients. Ethics approval was obtained from Siðanefnd háskólanna um vísindarannsóknir.
Results/findings: Responses from 39 SLPs (39% of all SLPs) were analysed; 97% reported having worked with multilingual clients and 31 (79.5%) reported having worked with children and youth. Nearly half reported that they had/could, assess a client’s skills in a language other than Icelandic, with fewer reporting that they could/would provide intervention that targets skills in a language other than Icelandic. All SLPs were multilingual; however, there was a mismatch between the languages used by the SLPs and those used by their clients.
Conclusion: SLPs indicated a range of barriers to working effectively with multilingual clients related to both resources and knowledge, as well as solutions that they had implemented in their own work. This work provides a strong direction for research into clinical solutions to enhance SLPs’ ability to support multilingual clients and their families in the Icelandic context.
Implications for children and families: You will learn how SLPs in Iceland work with multilingual clients and their families.
Implications for practitioners: You will learn about the context of being an SLP in Iceland, how SLPs in Iceland work with multilingual clients and their families, and how to support the implementation of evidence-based practices in clinical settings.
Funding: University of Iceland postdoctoral grant to KC.
Keywords: multilingual, clinical practice, service delivery, children, Iceland, speech-language pathology
This presentation relates to the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: