The Foreign Service Journal, June 2012

60 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 S CHOOLS S UPPLEMENT During the 1980s, doctors and nurses pioneered the delivery of medical care to patients who were not in the same physical location — a practice called “telehealth.” With leaps in Internet service and other broadband technologies during the past three decades, people in rural communities can now access sophisticated medical care online. From telehealth, telepractice (or telerehabilitation and telemedicine, as it’s also called) evolved naturally, as therapists in various disciplines began experimenting with the idea of pro- viding services online and document- ing their effectiveness. In the world of special education, speech patholo- gists have led the way in taking advan- tage of the potential of telepractice, making it an important topic of dis- cussion in the field as a whole. The Individuals with Disabilities Act mandates that all children with disabilities receive a free and appro- priate education. Public schools in the United States must therefore pro- vide special education services to meet the specific academic needs of each individual child with a disability. Many schools in the United States are located in rural or otherwise remote locations and cannot find the right special education service providers or enough of them. Telepractice has offered a solution, providing real-time intervention pro- grams where none existed before. Groups such as the American Occupational Therapy Association, American Physical Therapy Associa- tion, and the American Speech and Hearing Association quickly began to research telepractice therapy out- comes. They sought to determine the legitimacy of telepractice in the par- ticular areas of occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy and aural rehabilitation. These associa- tions have now established it as an accepted form of service delivery. Importantly for Foreign Service families, the State Department’s Employee Consultative Services also accepts telepractice as a means to ful- fill the special education needs of In the world of special education, speech pathologists have led the way in taking advantage of the potential of telepractice.