For a child to do well in school - he or she has to be able to communicate effectively. But sometimes, somewhere in the development process things go wrong - and in most cases, the reason why Johnny doesn't talk, is because he can't. But many times those problems go unnoticed, written off as developmental quirks. And now to help parents and educators recognize if there is a problem a working partnership has been established between the Ministry of Education, St. John's College and Fontbonne University in the United States. This evening a presentation was hosted by Dr. Gale Rice, professor and the University's Chair of the Communication Disorders and Deaf Education Department. Rice says one of their goals is to introduce speech language services to the schools in Belize.
Dr. Gale Rice,
"Communication is our ability to use and to understand language either from our motor aspects how we make sounds or how we understand language or use language to accomplish what we need to. In the case of a child that would be being able to participate in school and benefit from their education and communicate with their peers. And we are starting by developing early identification, screening programmes at the preschool level, hoping that if we can support children at that level then they won't be a need to identify them or provide special education services as they get older."
The topics discussed include the importance of early detection and the importance of support services.
