The views, information, and opinions expressed by guest speakers during conferences and masterclasses are solely those of the speaker and do not necessarily represent those of Bilinguistics and its employees.

Patricia Swasey Washington, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is Associate Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) at West Chester University (WCU), where she is founder and coordinator of the Bilingual Emphasis Course Sequence (BECS) and the CSD Study Abroad in Costa Rica Program. She is dedicated to preparing future bilingual speech-language pathologists and researchers to work with the growing bilingual population nationally and internationally.

Dr. Swasey Washington has over 34 years of experience as a multilingual speech-language pathologist, working with children and adults in a variety of clinical settings. This includes engaging extensively with Spanish-speaking children and their families for prevention, assessment, and intervention of speech and language disorders, in a collaborative, interprofessional manner. With focus on culturally responsive care, her research and clinical work include bilingual speech-language development and disorders, cultural and linguistic diversity, telepractice, and interprofessional education and practice.

One of Dr. Swasey Washington’s goals is to educate and train speech-language pathology students in developing their cultural and linguistic competences, so that they might provide culturally and linguistically responsive services to clients. Consequently, she created the Bilingual Emphasis Course Sequence (within the Masters in SLP program) and the Communication Sciences and Disorders Study Abroad in Costa Rica program in the CSD at WCU. These programs are focused on preparing pre-service professionals to support the languages and cultures of bilingual individuals. She is currently researching how training to improve cultural competence affects students’ self-perception of cultural competence and culturally responsive bilingual service delivery.

Financial: Patricia Swasey Washington, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is a full-time salaried employee of West Chester University. She will receive an honorarium from Bilinguistics for this presentation.

Non-financial – No relevant nonfinancial relationship exists.

While there is research demonstrating the importance of supporting the home language and culture of bilingual children, there is a lack of implementation of protocols and strategies to provide this support. The use of the home language should not be restricted to evaluation, but should be utilized during intervention activities.

Involving the home language and culture allows for interaction with family members (e.g., parents, siblings, grandparents) and promotes the autonomy of family members and pertinent community allies during the intervention process. Moreover, the therapeutic relationship can be built solidly in that the families’ cultural perspectives are respected and included in the planning and implementation of therapy goals and objectives (e.g., Verdon et al.,2016)

According to research, support of the home language in home and school contexts is important for the development of Spanish language skills, while support in English at home is not necessary for the development of English language skills (Duursma et. al., 2007). A recent systematic review of language interventions for young children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds identified four areas of focus (Larson et al., 2019). These were “explicit instruction on targeted skills; classroom curriculum interventions; interactive book reading and/or book making interventions; and naturalistic, routines-based interventions” (Larson et al., 2019, p. 160). Most of the interventions dealt with vocabulary and others included other aspects of language. For most of the studies, while the home language of the children (mainly Spanish) was utilized, their cultures were not taken into consideration. Interventions that include the home language and culture can be effectively done using strategies such as shared book reading.

For effective collaborations with parents, a concerted effort, with initiative from different professionals is essential. Often the SLP is the most appropriate candidate to coordinate the collaboration to provide for culturally responsive implementation of children’s goals and objectives. For example, the SLP can suggest appropriate books and how they can best be used at home and at school (Swasey Washington, 2015). This presentation will focus on supporting the language and culture of bilingual children and their families, through collaboration across professionals and caregivers to provide effective interventions.

Participants will be able to:
• State three ways the home language and culture can be supported
• Discuss methods of fostering collaboration among educational professionals to support the home language and culture
• Describe collaborative procedures among educational professionals and parents that help to support the home language and culture
• List three strategies for encouraging shared book reading with bilingual children.

Time-Ordered Agenda
10 minutes-Introduction and disclosures
15 minutes- Importance of supporting the home language of bilingual children
10 minutes- The relevance of culture for bilingual children and their families
10 minutes- Building an SLP-teacher interprofessional relationship to support the bilingual child
10 minutes- Building an SLP/teacher-parent relationship to support the bilingual child
15 minutes- Ways of supporting the home language and culture of the bilingual child with interprofessional collaboration
5 minutes- Closing
15 minutes – Moderated Q&A session