(Report submitted by Dr. Carmen Taylor)

The ASHA state policy workshop on May 11-13 2005 in Minneapolis, MN addressed public policy issues. The major topics focused upon included:

•  ASHA working with state associations

  1. •  James Potter (Director of Government Relations and Public Policy at the American Speech Language Hearing Association) spoke about lobbying and governmental political advocacy.
  2. •  Charlie Diggs (Director of State and Consumer Advocacy and Director of State Policy at ASHA) conducted a presentation with Janet Deppe (Director of State Education Policy at ASHA) to discuss how state associations and ASHA should form partnerships and work together.

    3. •  There are limited grants from ASHA to help states provide lobbyists.

•  Availability of material for salary-supplement bills.

•  Availability of information on grass roots infrastructure if a state calls ASHA and is concerned that qualification standards are at-risk based on national policy interpretation.

•  They provide ideas about getting people involved with their state organizations and state action plans for addressing IDEA.

•  They encourage students at the graduate level to become involved in professional advocacy because they found that state legislators seemed to value the thoughts of students and academic programs.

•  They developed ASHA's “Take Action” website for grassroots advocacy including contacting members of congress about federal legislation.

•  They asked several public policy/agenda-type questions to generate discussion. Some of the issues raised were:

•  Putting the new CCC standards in licensure laws

•  The need for ASHA to have some positive public relations at the state level so they can know what type of legislative impact ASHA is having,

•  The idea of ASHA and state associations/local association fee payment merging.

•  The impact of the reauthorization of IDEA '04 on the profession

  1. January and February of this year was the pre-regulatory period for IDEA and in the 75-day comment period there were over 1600 comments submitted and 7 regional hearings. Washington is supposed to have a final ruling by December 2005.
  2. Mr. Diggs spoke about the significance of reauthorization of Parts B and C of IDEA.
  3. 4. 2 billion dollars of federal money in 1998 were contributed to Part B (related to school services—free and appropriate education) and in 2005, 10.6 billion dollars of federal money were contributed to Part B
  4. There has been level funding of Part C in that same time period. Part C is natural environment services. (The concern from the ASHA perspective about Part C is related to personnel qualifications because some states are creating a categories called speech implementers for Part C to provide the services.)
  5. •  A new 0-6 year program is being offered in the reauthorization of IDEA 04.
  6. •  States may offer early intervention services under Part C for the 3-6 range until eligible for kindergarten.

•  This option would replace the Part B services and the parents are supposed to be informed if there are any differences in services so they can opt out.

•  ASHA's concern is that this new program may be used to continue to provide services from untrained personnel.

•  Part B is administered by the state department of education and Part C may be administered by any state agency.

•  A new term has surfaced for services for the Part C and it is “early intervening”. Under early intervening of Part C, a school may use up to 15% of IDEA money for children K-12 who don't need special education services but need additional academic or behavioral support.

•  The concern is in combination with Part C personnel qualifications, K-12 will divert up to 15% of IDEA money for kids who do not get special education services.

•  Will the SLP workload increase?

•  Will money that could be used for SLP services be used by other providers providing “early intervening” services?

•  Medicaid funding for Speech-Language Pathologists

•  The doctoral shortage in the profession

•  Healthcare reimbursement including evidence-based practice

•  Personnel issues

  1. •  In a balanced employment market for a profession, there will be anywhere from 2%-4% of the positions open, however, the SLP vacancy rates in the school systems in some states are into the double digits. The labor supply is causing some states to look at different options for putting SLP's in positions.

•  IDEA '04 personnel qualifications

  1. In IDEA ‘04 there were 15 states chosen to develop models to help with paperwork reduction of IEP's and IFSP's.
  2. One-third of all IDEA services are speech language pathology and there is some concern that IDEA ‘04 eliminates requirements that related service providers meet the highest requirement for a profession in that state.
  3. Some states that are challenging the master's level requirement to provide services are Florida , Texas , Tennessee , West Virginia , and Idaho .
  4. There is some concern that some states will create new categories of service providers to get around state laws.

•  ASHA's position is that a different set of qualifications should not be used based on the child's age and they have told the US Department of Education this.

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