alking together Clients as teachers: innovations within the speech

To fulfil the reality of client-centred practice, we believe that changes need to be made to allied health worker training. A primary reason is that while traditional curricula teach about the need for client-centredness, they too often do so within a pedagogical style of the expert-lecturer/teacher transmitting knowledge around client-centred practice to students. The problem with this is that client-centredness is taught within a teacher/learner paradigm that holds at its core significant power inequity. Thus along with the content of a client-centred approach, core learning may well also be that of differential power relations between client and therapist. In the speech therapy program of Charles Sturt University we acknowledge that a more pro-active approach needs to be taken in the preparation of therapists for client-centred practice. The Client Tutor scheme, in addition to the recently introduced Parent Tutor scheme, aim to challenge the power of the aspirant practitioner while providing core learning for students that will prepare them for the negotiated power-sharing of client-centred practice. In the Client Tutor scheme people with significant speech/language difficulties of neurological origin are recruited and paid at academic rates by the University over an eleven week period to teach small groups of students about their experiences of their speech/language difficulty as well as their experiences of therapy. In addition, the tutors express their needs and aspirations in a variety of domains, and the students are required to address these needs. All tutors assess the students on parameters based on a co-authored Mission Statement of Care, and these assessments form part of the students ’ subject year mark. In evaluating the first year of the Client Tutor scheme, the tutors report a fundamentally empowering experience that has been perceived as therapeutically beneficial. The paper is co-presented by a tutor as well as the academic organiser of the scheme