Introduction: Educational engagement plays a critical role as a protective factor in the lives of young people. Flexible Learning Programmes (FLPs) aim to reduce unemployment and welfare dependency through extending and re-connecting young peoples' engagement with mainstream education. In Western Australia, the Association for Independent Schools runs 28 FLPs covering years 7-12.
Aims: To describe the mental health and language strengths and needs of students attending FLPs in WA, to guide the development of educational programmes that take account of learning needs and improve educational engagement.
Method: We assessed the mental health and language skills of 50 students (12-18 years). The participants and their teachers completed a comprehensive battery of standardised tasks and functional measures.
Results: More than 50% of the sample met criteria for language disorder on tasks assessing structural language skills, phonological memory, and pragmatics. The mean total difficulties score on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire was 15.6 compared to the Australian community norm of 7.8 for this age range, with 33% of the sample falling in the ‘very-high difficulties’ band. Data from the mental health questionnaires identified victimisation, bullying, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, as well as family functioning, as areas of difficulty.
Conclusions: These findings add to the small body of research investigating the mental health and language needs of high-school students in FLPs. They highlight the importance of facilitating collaboration between speech pathologists and educators to ensure students' diverse learning needs are responded to, to maximise educational outcomes, social-emotional wellbeing, and support students' transition to functional employment.

Keywords:FLPs, DLD, mental health, adolescents

Submission Statement: Teachers at local FLPs reflected on their practice and identified the need to understand the mental health and language profiles of their students. Our multidisciplinary team responded by commencing this project. We are collaborating with teachers to develop programmes that respect diverse learning strengths and needs among the students.

Introduction:
Treatment for Selective Mutism (SM) is highly personalised depending on presentation of the client, particularly for adults. Collaborating with a nonverbal client to identify goals is challenging, warranting consideration of relational interaction models and visual supports such as Talking Mats to support communication.

Aim:
Describe and evaluate relational approaches and visual aids accompanying established SM treatment methods for T, a client in her early 20s with SM.

Method:
Initial evaluation indicated complex trauma history for T, disengagement with therapy and heavy reliance on support workers or family verbalising on her behalf. During early sessions, T was mute 60-100% of session duration, commencing with verbalising only on preferred topics such as craft, fingernails, personal events/belongings. When faced with goal-oriented interaction such as setting therapy objectives, T was mute and appeared to experience anxiety.

Established SM treatment techniques were implemented, including Taking pressure off T to speak (by using Talking Mats), Stimulus fading of familiar partners and Graded exposure (progressing to busier locales).
Additionally, relational and other interventions were applied; DIR Floortime, Circle of Security and emotional/sensory regulation identifying regulation tools in collaboration with T’s social worker.

Results:
Following 18 months of intervention, T’s muteness during sessions reduced to 2-5% duration while goal-oriented verbalisations increased. T reported noticing herself verbalising requests to family members and in community settings.

Conclusion:
Reduced regularity/severity of adult selective mutism can result from combining established techniques for SM with collaborative goal-setting using Talking Mats, emotional/sensory regulation supports and relational interaction models of COS and DIR Floortime.

Submission Statement / Link to Conference Theme: For participants to boldly respond to communication behaviours, including selective mutism, presenting in the adolescent or young adult population arising from mental health difficulties.

Key Words: selective mutism, youth, mental health, Talking Mats, relational approach, nonverbal.

Introduction: Many young people in custody present with a language disorder, which is a predictor of offending severity and recidivism. These young people have significant difficulty understanding legal language concepts, which has implications for their ability to navigate the legal system. This research examines the relationship between young people with language disorders and their ability to meet the language demands of the justice system.

Aim(s): This research aimed to: i) examine how well young people in custody provide definitions for and read legal terminology, ii) examine legal language knowledge and demographic variables, and iii) explore associations between legal language knowledge, language disorder severity, and offending.

Methods: An informal Legal Vocabulary Screen (LVS) was conducted with 47 young people in Queensland youth detention settings. Vocabulary and reading scores were derived for each young person. T-tests were used to compare average LVS scores between groups. Linear regression was used to examine the relationship between LVS scores/language disorder severity, and offending/reoffending.

Results: Young people had poor ability to read and provide definitions for legal language concepts (mean vocabulary score = 41%, reading score = 70%). In most instances, LVS scores and language disorder severity were not significantly associated with offending/reoffending.

Conclusions: The findings show that young people in custody have significant difficulties expressing and reading legal language concepts. These findings reflect the need for explicit teaching of legal vocabulary for young people within the youth justice system.

Keywords: Youth justice, legal vocabulary, language screener, adolescents, young offenders, recidivism

Submission statement: In order to support young offenders, we need to reflect on the difficulties they have experienced, respect their right to understand legal information, and respond appropriately to support their pro-social participation.

Just Moving On (JMO) is a pilot providing throughcare to people leaving prison. Throughcare is a process of connection and support beginning in prison and continuing as individuals reintegrate into community. JMO aims to bring the broad domains of support that speech pathologists can offer, to practical skill-building as participants reintegrate. Participants have agency in how they work with their speech pathologist, choosing from supports for language, literacy, emotional regulation, communication access, pragmatics, multidisciplinary connections, and communication-skills development for their children.
JMO enfolds the importance of communication in every aspect of life with awareness that other throughcare programs have not focused on building communication skill or awareness.
JMO is currently half-way through its term. The bodies of evidence applied include those for explicit instruction in language and literacy, and creation of safe, accessible communication contexts. Evidence collected includes direct measures of language, literacy, and interpersonal reactivity; and qualitative observations of participants, SLPs and reintegration co-workers.
Current outcomes within participants point toward increased esteem, feeling valued, determination to desist from crime, awareness of the power of communication, ability to reflect and manage communication to access social institutions and employment; and increase in language, literacy, and connection skills. These results point toward conclusions about the efficacy of routinely including SLPs in reintegration teams and elevating client agency and choice. These directions have implications for future SLP roles, community safety and equity, reduction of post-prison stigma, public policy and cost-saving, and collaboration across agencies – inviting further research in all these areas.

#throughcare #prisoners #codesign #Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander #reintegration #desistance

JMO works with reintegrating citizens (former prisoners) to build skills and awareness of the value to their lives of language for reflection. It does this with the deep respect of choice and agency in every element of the program. It responds with codesigned action in direct accordance to stated need.

Rationale
Functional language assessment is an essential aspect of describing an adolescent’s language ability, in conjunction with standardised assessments. Language sample analysis is an ecologically valid tool for the assessment of functional language use and many elicitation tasks have been described in the literature. Clinical decision making in relation to selecting the most appropriate discourse task is driven by administering one that clinicians have confidence will provide the most relevant and useful information.

Aims
To describe adolescent language performance across four elicitation tasks using eight language measures.
To consider what these context-sensitive measures tell us, when selecting elicitation tasks for assessing functional language in adolescence.

Methods
Typically developing adolescents (40), aged 12 to 18 years, were invited to respond on four elicitation tasks: story generation to a wordless picture book, fable retell, six personal narratives, and a monologic response to two stories that contain a moral dilemma. Eight language measures (lexical diversity, lexical complexity, percentages of words in affective, cognitive, and social domains, verbal facility, verbal productivity, and syntactic complexity) were used to describe the adolescents’ language performance.

Results
Results of adolescent performance on the eight language measures were analysed for context sensitivity. All measures except the semantic domain of affective words showed significant differences in performance across the four contexts.

Conclusions
Understanding how adolescent language performance is impacted by the discourse context can guide clinical decision-making when choosing elicitation task/s as part of a functional language assessment protocol.

Keywords
Discourse, adolescence, language performance, functional assessment

Submission statement
As clinicians we reflect on the needs of our adolescent client and choose the most informative and relevant tools for assessment. We respect the responses of the young people, particularly their personal discourse and respond by providing the most appropriate support in goal setting and intervention.

Background
Stuttering can negatively impact an individual across their lifespan, including in areas of educational and vocational attainment. Several reviews have been published on the impact of stuttering on school-aged children and adults. However, no reviews have specifically focused on adolescents from their perspective.
Aim
This study aims to provide an overview of the literature on the experiences of adolescents who stutter.
Method
A systematic search of six databases to identify articles published between 1990 and 2022 in peer-reviewed journals, written in English was conducted. Studies were included if participants had a diagnosis of developmental stuttering, were aged between 13 and 18 years, and reported results related to the impact of stuttering and derived directly from the participants. Deductive content analysis was used to identify commonly occurring themes.
Results
Forty-one studies were included. The majority were quantitative studies, conducted in the US and Australia, and used the Overall Assessment of the Speaker’s Experience of Stuttering questionnaire. Preliminary data analysis indicates limited exploration of adolescents who stutter in terms of quality of life, behavioural and cognitive reactions compared to emotional reactions, and the impact of stuttering on daily communication. A predominant theme highlighted the impact of bullying on adolescents' school experiences.
Conclusion
This scoping review is the first to focus specifically on the direct experiences of adolescents who stutter. The results will support speech pathologists to understand the experience of living with stuttering during this formative period of an individual’s life and may guide management decisions aligned with patients’ perspectives.

Introduction/or rationale
Difficulties using and understanding spoken or written language and directing and sustaining attention can be subtle. However, these difficulties are common and often result in students experiencing barriers to learning. Because difficulties with language and attention are often overlooked, students’ learning requirements may not be supported, they may have negative classroom experiences, and/or students may develop negative self-perceptions about learning and/or achievement.

Aim(s)
This study aimed to understand the language and/or attentional difficulties of 59 Grade 10 students, the barriers students’ encounter in the classroom, and students’ access to support, within inclusive classrooms.

Methods
Parent-completed questionnaires and student-completed standardised language and attention assessments and interviews were conducted between October 2021 and September 2022. Assessment data were used to understand students’ profiles of difficulty and the barriers they likely encountered in the classroom. Interviews were used to understand students’ classroom experiences and access to individual and/or whole-class support, within inclusive classrooms.

Results
Students experienced a range of language and/or attentional difficulties. A proportion of students had not previously been identified and access to targeted support was varied and limited. Students reported experiences of difficulties and of these difficulties being dis/missed. Many students described excellent teachers as those who utilised whole class accessible teaching practices.

Conclusions
Students with language and/or attentional difficulties continue to be under identified. However, whole class, accessible teaching practices offer an opportunity for teachers to meeting the learning requirements of students in inclusive classrooms. This research has implications for collaborative teacher professional development.

Keywords: barriers, education experience, inclusive education

Submission Statement: This research positions students as central partners in their education. By seeking and responding to students’ views, this research aims to respect and describe the unique perspectives of students and respond to their learning requirements by collaborating with classroom teachers in inclusive contexts.