Читать книгу The Handbook of Language and Speech Disorders - Группа авторов - Страница 28

As the world becomes a smaller place in an ever‐continuing process of cross‐border integration across nations (Robertson & Scholte, 2007), there is also an upsurge of speech, language, and communication needs in clinical practice rooms that are asked to cater for CLD groups, such as migrants, refugees, and established ethnic and racial minorities; also, the existence of special groups like LGBT communities (4.5% of the US population; Newport, 2019), the deaf community and war veterans, among others, should not be overlooked when discussing diversity. Verdon (2015) investigated practice with CLD families in 14 sites across four continents and five countries. Verdon, McLeod, and McDonald (2014) showed that one fifth of SLP services in Australia are provided for a non‐English language. Though there are no decisive statistics on the provision and uptake of speech and language services to CLD populations, sporadic studies internationally provide evidence in support of the claim (e.g., Fernandes & Wertzner, 2014; Leirbakk, Magnus, Torper, & Zeanah, 2019; Scharff Rethfeldt, 2019). The prevalence of speech impairment among CLD individuals is usually projected based on the general population with little reliable data; however, most minorities are also in low/middle income settings (Battle, 2012).

More than half of the world’s population is being raised bilingually (Marian & Shook, 2012). The multicultural and multilingual nature of the world that we live in is indisputable. To exemplify, in Europe there are 87 distinct peoples among whom 33 constitute the predominant populations of countries, and the remaining 54 are ethnic/linguistic minorities—14% of the entire European population (Pan & Pfeil, 2003). There are 288 living languages in Europe (Ethnologue, 2019); about 90% of them fall within three large branches of Indo‐European languages, while the remaining fall in Indo‐European languages subgroups, and some are non‐Indo‐European languages. “Just over half of Europeans (54%) are able to hold a conversation in at least one additional language, a quarter (25%) are able to speak at least two additional languages and one in ten (10%) are conversant in at least three; 44% of Europeans can read a newspaper/magazine in a foreign language” (Eurobarometer, 2012, pp. 5–6). Most common foreign languages are English (38%), French (12%), German (11%), Spanish (7%), and Russian (5%), and spoken at a level better than basic skills (Eurobarometer, 2012, p. 6). In 2015, 75,000 refugees arrived in the European Union (EU), starting the European migrant crisis, with asylum‐seekers and economic migrants coming from Muslim‐majority countries in regions south and east of Europe, including the Greater Middle East and Africa (Eurostat, 2019); this fact contributes to changing European demographics. Based on the European Union Committee of Speech and Language Therapists/Logopedists (CPLOL) (https://cplol.eu/about‐cplol/the‐organisation.html), there are 80,000 logopedists in 31 professional organizations in 30 European countries.

In the US, 41% of the population constitutes what are known as minority groups that exhibit racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversification (i.e., African American, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, First Nations, Pacific Islanders), a number that by the year 2060 is expected to increase to 60%; though English is the predominant language and Spanish follows up next, more than 350 languages are spoken in US homes, and “approximately 35 of these languages [are] spoken by at least 100,000 individuals over the age of 5” (see Hyter & Salas‐Provance, 2019, pp. 1–5); more than 59.5 million people speak a non‐English language at home, according to the US Census. There is a change taking place in US demographics, with the numbers of those US‐born decreasing and those non‐US‐born substantially increasing (Colby & Ortman, 2015). Also, while the general US population is older rather than younger, and those younger tend to be non‐European, non‐white, and non‐monolingual, it is a stark contrast that the current SLP workforce in the US consists of predominantly white monolingual females (e.g., Williams & McLeod, 2012); actually only 6% of SLPs in the US are certified bilingual service providers (ASHA, 2018).

In view of such demographics and ongoing shifts and an understanding of its own workforce, ASHA is strategically prioritizing diversity as a distinctive characteristic of its members (by recruiting a more diverse workforce) and as an acquirable skill, by promoting SLPs’ education on diversity issues via both standard and lifelong education and encouraging a clinical practicum on a variety of minority groups that exhibit different types of diversity (ASHA, 2010). Internationally, “guiding documents and conference topics” indicate that this is a vital concern in the field worldwide (Threats, 2010). CPLOL, together with national organizations around the world, similarly place increasing emphasis on multicultural/lingual and other diversity issues in their position statements.