The Foreign Service Journal, June 2012

58 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 1 2 T ELEPRACTICE : A NSWER TO THE S PECIAL E D P UZZLE O VERSEAS ? T HE IDEA OF GETTING PROFESSIONAL THERAPY OR REHABILITATIVE SERVICES ONLINE MAY SEEM IMPROBABLE , BUT THE FIELD OF TELEPRACTICE IS PROVEN AND GROWING . B Y E RIN L ONG ne day in the summer of 2006, my husband came home from work and told me about an e-mail he had received from a fellow Foreign Service officer. The officer asked my husband if I could provide speech therapy for his daughter if they came to post. The answer, of course, was yes. But what interested me was how this family had found me. Facing a move to a new post with a child who had recent- ly been identified as needing speech therapy; this little girl’s mother had been scouring the world for professional assis- tance. I cannot imagine how much time she put into this search, but she must have persevered for many hours and days. Somehow she happened to read an old newsletter from Consulate Monterrey. And in that particular newsletter she came upon my husband’s self-introduction, in which he mentioned that his wife was a speech pathologist. It seemed a difficult and haphazard approach to finding a speech pathologist, or any special education service for that matter. But I soon came to understand that this is typ- ical of the kind of effort Foreign Service families with a child needing special education services have to undertake before every overseas posting. And it is even more complicated for families that need more than one type of special education provider. Sometimes appropriate local therapists and teachers are readily available. More often, a family finds some of what they need and patches together the rest, with help from a local teacher or therapist who is not a fluent speaker of English. Whatever the result, the approach is time-con- suming, and completely “hit or miss.” The emerging field of telepractice may be the answer for Foreign Service families. Some FS families have already started using the Internet for educational purposes, but the idea of getting professional therapeutic or rehabilitative ser- vices online is new and may seem improbable. The following is an overview of this promising new area and a look at its potential to meet Foreign Service families’ needs. In addition to offering you a window into what online therapy actually looks like from my experience as a professional speech therapist and teleprovider, I hope to be able to answer some questions and inspire you to look into it for yourself. Cyberbridges A product of the revolution in communications technol- ogy, telepractice has only recently come into its own. S CHOOLS S UPPLEMENT Erin Long is a speech-language pathologist and founder of Worldwide Speech (www.worldwidespeech.com), a n online speech therapy company. She has provided speech and language therapy for many Foreign Service families. She currently works with public and charter schools in the Washington, D.C., area, and conducts online therapy with clients outside the United States. Her husband, Jeremy Long, joined the Foreign Service in 2005. The couple was previously posted in Mexico and Brazil. O