Birgitta Rosén-Gustafsson,
President of CPLOL:
Honoured guests, dear colleagues and friends,
It is a great pleasure and an honour for me to welcome you all to
the celebration of CPLOL’s 20th anniversary! Indeed it is an
important occasion, rather like a coming of age. CPLOL 20 years old – now
expected to be grown up and mature!
On the 6th of March 1988, 10 countries gathered to
sign the constitution charter that founded CPLOL. The aim was to create an
association for speech and language therapist’s associations all over Europe, to
harmonize the education/training, the clinical work, to exchange research, to
develop the profession, well, at the end always to strive to provide the best
care for our patient groups - to assess, treat, and to support persons with
communication disorders.
Celebrating a birthday reminds us to look back a little. What has
happened during these past 20 years? As we serve persons with communication
disabilities one can ask the question: Has communication improved?
Well, imagine 20 years ago. We had actually a quite different
society, although it doesn’t seem long ago. The changes, especially the
technological ones, are remarkable. We had no internet, no mobile phones, no
e-mail. The European Union had in those days 12 members. Europe was still
divided in east and west, people couldn’t travel and hardly even communicate
from one side to the other. A letter could take more than one week to send from
one part of Europe to another. So, is it easier to communicate today, 20 years
later? Well, the answer in one sense is of course, with emphasis, YES.
Today, 20 years later, the European Union has 27 member states.
We have access to all the equipment needed to speed up communication over the
borders. CPLOL’s 31 member associations from 28 countries could, if they wanted,
have daily contact in a very easy way. We can send around minutes, documents,
photos and whatever, with email, around Europe to each other. We can make Skype-calls,
with the computer, with no costs, all over the world. We can discuss patient
cases, ask for advice and/or just communicate for fun.
The CPLOL spirit is fantastic as it has really created a living
Europe; to get personal and professional contacts despite different cultures and
languages in so many countries. It is indeed amazing and a privilege to have
friends and colleagues in almost every country in Europe! We share a lot of
experiences and communication is so easy!
But, on the other side, has communication improved for all our
patient groups? Is it easier to communicate now, compared to 20 years ago?
Well, that question is not as easy as the previous one to answer.
Through research we have a greater knowledge today about different
language/communication disorders, which of course help the patients. The
technological progress has developed new, more efficient communication aids for
patients. New screening tools have been developed in order to detect
communication disorders in children as early as possible. Compensatory
aids/computer programs have been developed for persons with reading and writing
disabilities…etc etc. So, the possibilities are maybe, in some senses, better
now compared to 20 years ago. However, still there is a LOT to do.
Because the development goes so quickly, our patients risk to be
excluded from society, when they cannot follow this fast speed of technological
communication. At work places, nowadays persons also with lower education level,
are dependent on computers, which means that if they cannot read and write, they
will have difficulties to manage their work. This is a real change compared to
just 10 or 15 years ago. As much as 1/3 (Swedish study) of the population have
no access to computers and cannot use them in their daily life. Some of the
people in this group are our client groups, who because of their language
difficulties are excluded.
60,000
speech and language therapists in Europe is still not enough to cover the needs
from all the persons that are locked out from the society because they cannot
speak/read/write/understand. As we nowadays are more dependent on e-mail,
internet, mobile phones, persons who cannot handle/use this equipment are even
more excluded today than 20 years ago. If you cannot keep up with the speed of
communication, you are lost, left alone. When you cannot express what you mean,
when you do not understand what you read, when you don’t find the words…
I tried to calculate how many persons we, as SLTs, actually
serve. We all know that we should need a longitudinal study, trying to get the
real figures, as we don’t have these in total. But, I made some brief
calculations: 10% voice problems, 5-8 % dyslexia, 15% children with
developmental language disorders, stroke patients with aphasia or dysarthria, 1%
stutterers, children with handicaps like autism, swallowing difficulties;
laryngeal cancer, etc etc. There are indeed MANY persons who should receive our
help, although many of them do not get it, because we still have a lack of
professionals. And the decision takers very often do not have the knowledge and
insight about the consequences of a communication disorder.
We have to continue our work to improve social inclusion of all
our patient groups. We, CPLOL, is the body at the European level that should
have the pre-eminent role in advising and interpretation in discussions about
speech, language, voice and swallowing disorders. We, speech and language
therapists in Europe, have the knowledge, we can explain what it means not to
be able to communicate. To serve all the thousands and thousands of persons out
there in Europe we need to have more professionals, we need more research, even
more knowledge, we need to continue to develop evidence-based practice.
In 20 years CPLOL has achieved a lot. We have managed to create a
mature association in many ways. However, more work needs to be done, it is an
ongoing process. Now we take the step out in life as a grown up/adult
association, continuing our aim to develop the profession, always to strive
towards improving the life chances for our clients. After all, that is the
primary objective of our daily work.
Let us celebrate this anniversary and enjoy what we have
achieved: communication throughout Europe, together here in Strasbourg!
Thank you very much!
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