Training to meet the needs of the communicatively impaired population of South Africa: a project of the University of the Witwatersrand.

Abstract

At a time when South Africa is in the throes of transition, ideologies in the educational, medical, economic and social spheres are being redefined and redirected. The field of speech pathology and audiology is no exception. The Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, University of the Witwatersrand has acknowledged an urgent need to address the requirements of a multilingual and multicultural South Africa and extend training beyond the white middle-class population. It is the responsibility of the training institutions to redirect the objectives of their curricula in order to meet these needs. This paper describes the changes introduced by the Department. These include teaching of community work principles and primary health care to the speech and hearing therapist, and the training of personnel for an alternative form of service, such as the community speech and hearing worker (CSHW) and the community-based rehabilitation worker (CBRW).