In early October last year, the University of Newcastle sent their third round of community engagement students to Vietnam. The students spent most of their time in Hoi An, working at the Kianh Foundation (school for children with special needs) and Hearing and Beyond (school for children with hearing impairment). However, the student group and their clinical educator made time to visit the speech therapy team at Da Nang University of Medical Technology and Pharmacy to work on the development of a new clinical resource for parents and teachers in Vietnam.

When University of Newcastle students visited the university in July they developed a resource on the warning signs for early childhood development (insert link from website). During their visit the students worked with the university ST team to further develop this resource into aged-based interaction, communication and pre-literacy strategy handouts for parents and educators. Although there are many of these types of resources available for Australian and other populations, it is not appropriate to simply use these resources in Vietnam. Often the most challenging part of developing new resources is to ensure resources are contextually appropriate and will be understood and used by the intended population. Strategies and examples of how to implement these strategies need to be relevant to families and educators.

Newly-developed resources can be found on the TFA website on the resources page

TFA would like to thank the University of Newcastle Speech Pathology School clinical coordinators, clinical educators and students for their continued commitment to supporting the development of speech and language therapy in Vietnam and we look forward to ongoing collaboration in the future.