The Lidcombe Program (LP) in the Community

This study was designed by the research team at the Australian Stuttering Research Centre and has been running in Australia for a couple of years. The study aims to find out more about how the LP is used in clinics across the world and also whether these therapists, who do not work closely with the research team, can get similar results to the expert LP practitioners.
 
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence and some published work that shows that when specialist Speech & Language Therapists are well trained then the LP works in much the same way regardless of geographical location.
Extension of the Australian study to England will provide data on the use and effects of the LP when used by SLTs with a range of expertise in stammering. Some of the SLT participants see only a few children who stammer and others have highly specialised skills. Some background data will also be collected on the children so that we hope to see if any patterns emerge concerning things that help or hinder a good therapy outcome.

At the moment we have nearly 30 SLT recruits. Some have not started the LP with any children since joining the study and some are now working with their second child. At our current rate of recruitment we will need at least another year to collect information on a sufficient number of children to meet our target. At the research unit we are responsible for all of the ethical and R&D approvals for the study, recruitment, data collection and management and day to day issues as they arise. We also remove all the information that could lead to the data being identified and then send to Australia for analysis. This is an exciting opportunity to work with our colleagues in Australia, something that would have been extremely difficult before email and the internet
made communication across the world so easy.