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Megan Walker: Hello and welcome to Market Savvy Conversations. My name is Megan Walker. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by a very special guest Tim Kittel, who is the National President of Speech Pathology Australia and is also a practicing speech pathologist. We're going to be talking about the challenges faced by therapists in private practice in these fast-paced, high demand times. Hi Tim, how are you?

Tim Kittel: Hi, Megan. I'm really good. Thank you. Thanks for inviting me along.

Megan Walker: I'm so glad to have you here. Tim, give us the background, start by telling us a little bit about who you are, your studies, where you've practiced. Just your story.

Tim Kittel: Sure, absolutely. Look, I was one of the lucky ones who fell into speech pathology. So I started doing a degree majoring in English thinking that I would be an English teacher and that was kind of the goal I was going to live happily ever after and teach children. But it turns out that perhaps it's not a fairytale that actually teaching is something that maybe I don't have the skillset for. That crowd control of things. I was much more interested in language. And when I actually found out that speech pathology is more than very traditional articulation therapy or stuttering or lisp but actually there's a whole world of vocabulary and story creation and sentence structure. It worked, it just clicked for me.

So I started my studies at Flinders University, I'm based in South Australia. And just loved it. Loved absolutely every single day. As soon as I walked into the lecture theater, I was just, "Oh, this is really interesting stuff." But I ended up with my first job working in education. That's where I wanted to be. And working in classrooms with teachers and loved that job. But then an opportunity came up in disability. So I jumped shipped after about a year and started working with small kids in disability. And then, it was back in the beginning of the century where we could travel places. And I ended up spending five years in the UK, also working in Central London, doing some really fantastic stuff. Again with pediatrics. I've always been focused on developmental language, which I really, really loved.

Then after five years I came back and then did some rounds again. Went into hospital, back into disability school age, found myself in education again. And my longest job is now this one where I work in a private practice and see kids one-to-one. But I suppose I've done lots and lots of things but I've always really liked quite direct therapy with kids working really, really hard.

Megan Walker: Oh, fantastic. What an amazing background and the stories you could tell.

Tim Kittel: Look, absolutely. It really is one of the best things, it's one of those, it's not the only career, but I think with a lot of allied health professions, you can actually have... Once you've done a few years at something, you either challenge yourself and move upwards or you move into a completely different field. Because it's so much you can do.

Megan Walker: Yeah. Wonderful. And in moving up and progressing your career, you've taken on a number of board positions. Would you like to talk to that?

Tim Kittel: Yes. So, that's been fascinating. Again, an accidental fall into. So I was working in education and I took on a contract role as the Principal Speech Pathologist for education in South Australia and was doing a lot of work with adolescents and discovering the difference between regular adolescents and adolescents who've actually grown up with a language disorder. And actually those two look very, very similar to one another which is fascinating stuff. Anyway, I was doing a lot of work and pilot project working. I think that's what drew the board of directors' attention to me. As being doing something somewhat different. And I was asked to apply for a position on the board. And I rather blindly did that and ventured into this amazing group of very, very inspirational people at the top of their careers and throwing out ideas. And it was something completely different for me, Megan. So all of a sudden we're looking at strategy.

Megan Walker: And governance?

Tim Kittel: Yeah, exactly. Not just clinical governance, but real corporate governance, how do you influence people? Advocacy, media, very, very high level conversations. And normally, I would have turned tail and ran but I didn't realise that, of course, when you're sitting on a board, you're actually there with a group of people and it's like a team sport, really having a bit of a go and looking at fascinating problems and fleshing it out. Which is really different to my private practice where, one person in a room with a family and I feel like I'm the one that has to provide all of the answers. Now all of a sudden I don't, I can provide the questions.

Tim Kittel: So it's been fascinating. I joined the board in 2015 and just loved it. And when I fall into something that I love, I think like most allied health professionals, you research as much as you possibly can about it. So I decided to train myself up a little bit and really start working out, what is strategy? What is risk? How do we do the best job that we possibly can do when we're in a board? I've fallen into it. I'd actually probably better be pretty good at that because there's a lot of responsibility involved in it. So I did, I trained myself up and I was very, very lucky to be voted on to an international board, which is called IALP but it actually stands for the International Association for Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Which again, you're then moving into that room was amazing. It's a board table of about 33 people, all of them world leaders in particular areas. So stroke recovery or multi-lingualism or autism or something along those lines, I got into that particular board because I'm actually representing certain medium size societies and how they interact with and then how we influence or work with agencies like the WHO. So all of a sudden, I'm like a kid in a candy store. This is amazing. You like these kinds of conversations. And the wonderful thing is that I never really felt like I was the boss. If that makes sense. I was really a bit of a team player and just completely different skillset. So, since then I've joined a few other things. I've joined an advisory board for one of the university speech pathology programs, which is fantastic, love that.

I also was invited to an Irish journal in communication, which is fantastic. I've never published a word in my life, but I could bring some of that clinical expertise as well. And I've just accepted being appointed for a role on a not-for-profit board here in South Australia, which is all about active inclusion for people from a variety of lives, getting into sport and recreation. And I can't wait to start walking into a room with people with different professions from me doing problem solving stuff as well. So I love that. It really energises me.

Megan Walker: I love your mindset and your approach to taking on new challenges. That was so refreshing to hear you say, sitting around a board table about asking questions. When so many of us are used to having experiences of boards of command and control. And so how refreshing to go, "We're actually here to be problem solvers"? That just opens up innovation, doesn't it?

Tim Kittel: It's amazing. It just energises you because what you're really going is asking questions of each other and you're acting as though as a brains trust. So we have amazing CEOs in all of the organisations in which I'm involved. That's kind of a job, you want to get the best CEO that you absolutely can. And you act as a bit of a brains trust in terms of, this is something that we are seeing out there that we think need to try, or this is my experience. We have big board meetings at Speech Pathology Australia. So we all get together or used to for about two days. And I am exhausted by the end of it. I just go home and just smack on to the bed.

No one talk to me for ages. But it's so energising. I love it. Absolutely really, really love that.

Megan Walker: Fantastic. I want to go down a little rabbit hole question without notice. If a practitioner therapist is listening and they're thinking, "Oh yeah, I think a board career could be for me," what's just a few early thoughts you've got for people if they're preparing for that direction?

Tim Kittel: Yeah, absolutely. My advice really is, get as involved with the organisation that you're interested in so that you know what it is that's going on. Because if you step onto a board, you're actually taking on a huge amount of responsibility. If that organisation goes belly up, you're responsible for that. So it's not something to take on lightly. So I think that what you do is you get involved in that particular association. So if it's your professional organisation, if you're a health provider, then get involved in the activity going on, meet people, become energised by all of those sorts of things. And I also think that it's a good idea to ask questions, get involved, social media presence, anything that's going on, get involved.

And if you okay and you're enjoying that energy, then I think maybe you step up.

Megan Walker: Yeah. Oh, great advice. We're a humble lot, aren't we? And so many people have got these massive wealth of knowledge and information but, "Oh, who would want to hear from me? I don't want to be on camera. I won't do that." And you'd just think, "Come on, you can do it." Yes. There might be a naysayer here and there but as been a Brené Brown says, "Join me in the arena and then I'll listen to what you've got to say." We don't worry about naysayers.

Tim Kittel: Yeah. Precisely.

Megan Walker: Tell me about speech pathologists in Australia. Let's come back to our home patch. We've got unprecedented growth and demand. We've got all sorts of challenges happening. What do you see from your role, both as practitioner and as president, the challenges being faced by pathologists in Australia?

Tim Kittel: It's such a good question, Megan. So around about three or four years ago, there was this massive expansion of university programs and people were really worried about, "Oh my gosh, we're going to have an oversupply of allied health practitioners." This is not that long ago. 2016, 2017, we were thinking that actually there weren't going to be enough opportunities for students or early career or all of those things. And I think what's been fascinating... the society that we live in today has changed massively. Particularly if you look at disability or aged care, for example. The Royal Commission into aged care blew up what it was that we were expecting of the role of how do we look after our seniors?

And if we think about allied health as being a different type of health, primary health is about keeping people alive. You go to the Doctor, or you're going to see a nurse, you go to hospital when your life is in danger. But if we use the model that allied health makes life worth living in all other, now, all of a sudden with this comes activity around social media, people are actually talking about what does make life worth living. And I think that that's driven the demand for allied health in that not deliberate way or anything along those lines, but we've started to work out now that mental health, aged care, disability, the way that we actually look after the most vulnerable people in our society is through a number of layers. But allied health has a real role to play.

All of a sudden there's been this massive demand of allied providers.

Yeah? And so that's had a couple of big challenges. I think one of them in particular is, now all of a sudden, it's much harder to get allied health practitioners into rural and remote areas.

And I'm even thinking about just not the metropolitan cities, the second tier, other cities and states and territories, are actually having huge difficulties recruiting. I look into Northern Territory and the Northern Territory in particular is having real difficulties in terms of attracting and making sure that healthcare is viable. And that's not even rural that's just a territory. So I think that's a massive problem. Because what happens is the demand is happening. The universities are in metropolitan centers. The placements tend to be very close to the universities. And so people are practicing there. And so there's a real demand for allied health practitioners there. And I think that's something that we really have to look at.

I think the other one, and I think you're absolutely right by saying Australia is looking at who are Australians, where is our diversity within there? And looking at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation within allied health is a massive, massive, massive need for. If we're going to be Australian, if we're going to be this continent, we actually need to see lots and lots of different people. Different backgrounds, different ethnicities, languages, culture, all of that stuff coming into play. And for speech pathology in particular, what that means is we need to let go of some of that, this is the right way to communicate. That very white-centric, British pace.

Megan Walker: White coat.

Tim Kittel: Exactly. Yeah. White coat. I will be the practitioner that knows absolutely everything, exactly what you're saying. This is the correct way to be using language. We're actually, language doesn't have the correct way. It's really just about making sure that your message is being delivered in the way that you want it to be delivered and that you're able to transmit your thoughts and feelings correctly to other people. So, there's massive sort of turn around, particularly for speech pathology in terms of what is the most important part of communication, how does identity tie in and do we have people who represent those communication styles of identities within our profession?

This is why I love being on a board because you're like, "There is no answer to that, is there?" But everybody will have a different opinion and different strategies. We all agree that that's something that's vital.

People that think that it's not.

There are all sorts of things that we need to do in order to progress our profession, progress all allied health professionals actually. And respond to everything that's going on in Australia.

Megan Walker: I've done this work for 14 years and that time you're talking about five years ago, I was having conversations and doing lots of speaking and conferences and things and talking to speech pathologists and OTs, particularly who would come and say to me, "No one knows our profession." OTs, "They think we're just grab rails," speech therapists, "They just think that we're stuttering." "There's not enough clients." "No one will pay for us." Dieticians we're in this boat as well. And it was a very much a, "We don't want to market ourselves but we're desperate." These conversations were just happening over and over again. And I think, wow, fast forward we're now in a position of you can work where you want, you can deliver to telehealth services into Darwin, Alice Springs, Hobart, wherever you've got a thin market.

And the choice is yours. It's almost flipped in a way. We've got to be careful now that.. supply and demand issues cause really big constraints don't they?

Tim Kittel: Absolutely. Absolutely. It brings up that whole notion of equity.

So if there's a huge demand for professionals, how do we make sure that everybody has access?

Megan Walker: Yes. And what's happening at the university level. Tim, no doubt you're having those conversations. Are we gearing up to have a big recruitment drive? We want you, I'm thinking Uncle Sam come and sign up for a career in allied health.

Tim Kittel: The universities, I can't really speak for any other profession but for speech pathology, I mean the universities are doing an amazing job. They are opening up a number of courses and backgrounds and making sure that they're recruiting the right people for the jobs. I think that's really exciting is that Northern Territory is just about start a program. Tasmania finally is getting their own particular programs. So those areas which have been very hard to actually get speech pathologist into and keep them there because otherwise, you're relying on people to leave, say Tasmania, for example, go and study and then come back to Tasmania and work. Which doesn't always happen, particularly if you're newly out of high school. So I think the universities are doing a brilliant job. We've got some new professional standards. They've jumped on board with the identity of a speech pathologist, really great stuff in terms of the curriculum.

And everything's going really well because Australia is demanding more as well and wanting more and recognising more. It's just a matter of us keeping up with the population growth and the need for things to actually happen. So I can't fault the universities at all.

And I can't fault society either. It's just one of those things we just have to work as smart as we possibly can.

So is everybody.

Megan Walker: Yeah. And ride that peak of the wave and... And yeah. Unprecedented growth. And tell me from a personal professional perspective, what's your vision for the speech pathology industry in Australia?

Tim Kittel: This is brilliant because I love it because I don't have to have a vision, which is great because that would be the best autocrat thing and go, "Well, this is what's going to happen." Was really, really happy in 2016, Speech Pathology Australia commissioned a project which was actually looking at... The project was called SP 2030. So we employed a futurist who also had a background in speech pathology. And she was amazing. From January to August of that year, there was huge stakeholder consultation about when we hit 2030, what is it that we actually want to say? And a number of, eight aspirations actually came out from that discussion. And really it's about... What that project has actually done, has actually driven all of us strategy and our strategic plans as we go. So instead of actually having an actual strategic plan, we just got these aspirations. Just. Got these amazing aspirations.

Megan Walker: It's impressive.

Tim Kittel: So looking at communities that have communication access, that services are for everybody like we were talking about. So it's so ingrained in me. I could talk about it always.

Anybody can access wherever they are in the lifespan, that actually the clients themselves and the communities that they're in actually shape this type of service. That families and carers are really skilled and confident when dealing with communication disorders or swallowing difficulties, that speech pathologies actually start working a lot more with other professions as well. That sort of thing. And taking up innovation, looking at technology, how has that progressed from the old 1990 style speech pathology. Which, terrifying, that's 30 years old now.

Tim Kittel: But also and similarly, having a workforce that actually is quite diverse, quite dynamic all of those things. So, that project came up with all these aspirations and that's guided us. And particularly last year, when actually we had all these mini projects that we were going to do, we're going to deliver on, we were trundling along really, really nicely, February comes and actually that strategic plan just had to go out the window. But what we had left was this idea about this is what our future needs to look like. This is what we need to have.

And I'm a bit cruel when I said, "It went out the window," it's not, we had to reprioritise, but we had to really focus on what is it as a core culture speech pathology is, and how do we go with that? And actually, look, I was terrified that we're going to lose members due to the pandemic because of course financial concerns, having to reevaluate, all of those things was actually going to happen. But in fact, we grew even more exponentially last year than we had in previous years because we were using that, we're going to be responsive. Here's where the innovation is. Here's how we do things in a diverse manner. Here's how reach out to other populations, that sort of thing. Our members got involved.

We did a lot of building on it. So, Megan, I'm just in this amazing privileged position to actually watch that unfold and just be really proud of what it is that our profession does.

Megan Walker: I've just jotted down two notes, vision and tribe. I love the fact that you actually can recite your vision. It is true to what the word vision is supposed to mean. It's not framed on a wall somewhere, that's fantastic. And the flexibility of being able to adapt to a global pandemic and still have... I don't know, it's more like an essence of truth, isn't it? The why of why your organisation exists is what comes to the fore even more so.

Tim Kittel: Look, I think about the people who graduated this year, they started their course it was a four year undergraduate course. They started in 2018, 2019, again, that's not my strong point. But the world was so different then, and how much they've had to learn in order to practice say next year, it's just massive. We've all had to be incredibly agile. It's not just the pandemic, it's all of the political, economic shifts, societal shifts, the things that we're talking about now, are just making it a different place that you graduate from to when you actually started your studying.

Megan Walker: Definitely. Which is why the tribe was the other point I wanted to touch on. In this uncertainty we do gravitate towards who's like me, who's thinking like me, where do I feel that sense of reassurance and information and positivity from as well? I think that group thinking is become more important and people are reaching for that. And what's your thoughts?

Tim Kittel: Yeah. Look, I think that that's exactly right. I think that what happened was people started to look at their own sense of identity and pull in towards it, right? Okay. This is who I am. And first of all, we thought about our families, how lucky my family is safe. And then we thought about our communities, our greater families, our friends, all of that stuff. We did all of that personal stuff. How do I keep everybody safe in this time of disruption? And then we looked at our professional identity as well. And we pulled in again. You're absolutely right. And it was fascinating. So something that wasn't working terribly well from my point of view, so not an official point of view, but 2018, 2019, in speech pathology, there are metropolitan based groups, branches, right? So you might have, for example, the Queensland Group, which actually has done incredibly well. Queensland's a massive example. They actually had three particular meeting points.

And have their meetings there, which is great. All of a sudden this pandemic happens. We've got this thing called Zoom, which actually all of a sudden, it's not just these three hubs, it's everyone in the entire state.

And because there was all of this concerns, suddenly the numbers of people attending those meetings went up.

It brought people closer together even though we couldn't be in a meeting room. And that's something that's Australia. Australia, you've got so many people in these capital cities.

But actually 20% of our population are not in those capital cities. And it's about bringing those people in as well. So there're some advantages that happened.

Megan Walker: Yes. Level playing field, regardless of location. I like that.

Tim Kittel: But you could do it before couldn't you? But it was basically about say 20 people in one room and then three people on a screen being ignored.

So the word that I'm terrified of is the word hybrid.

It doesn't make it even playing field. It's hard work.

Megan Walker: Yeah. Of the 200 questions I've got in mind. There's two left I'll ask you so that this doesn't go for three days.

Tim Kittel: Sorry, a speech pathologist can talk. You should have known this.

Megan Walker: Oh, look, it's open market and I'm just thinking, "Oh, there's so many things I want to ask you. This has been such an interesting conversation." I want to ask you about your, I suppose, thoughts around speech pathologists integrating with other disciplines. So your thoughts around that. And raising the profile of the profession and then maybe... I'm going to sneak a third one, I'll remind you of what it is. And then your advice, I suppose, to an individual working in the field. Should we wrap that way?

Tim Kittel: Sure. Yeah, my gosh. Okay. Which way are we going to go first? So-

Megan Walker: So. Maybe start with raising the profile of the profession. What's your organisation doing on that front?

Tim Kittel: Yeah. Sure. Okay. So in terms of raising the profile of the profession, I think again, how I was talking about those aspirations, one of the things that's really important is timely service. And I think timely is vital for all allied health, not just speech pathology, but if you have something that you need, you need to access people who are able to make your life better straight away, right? One of the things that I find personally, being a pediatric speech pathologist is that a parent will find that their child isn't talking quite the way that they were expecting was going to happen. And this is not a blame statement because this is probably what I would do as well. They go to people that they trust often a family member or perhaps a GP or another professional and the advice probably is from very, very well-intentioned, "Don't worry, I know somebody who was a bit slow to talk and they grew out of it. So just wait." That sort of thing. Which comes from a really, really lovely place, which is everything's going to be fine. I want you to be happy.

Tim Kittel: And that's true. That does happen. There are a percentage of kids who are because of the law of average, some people are going to be below average, like 50% of us. And some of them do actually catch up, but for quite significant number of kids that catch up doesn't take place.

And I think that it's really important too. And I also think that when we say, "Oh, don't worry, it'll all work out." That black cloud just doesn't poof and disappear, right?

Megan Walker: No. Missing an opportunity of neuroplasticity.

Tim Kittel: I know, right? That's exactly it. And I love it if I actually have a family coming in and see me and actually, "Do you know what? When we do this technique, actually we do get communication and things are going well, you don't need to see me anymore." With the workforce demand, I don't need to keep clients. If I can actually give you some really, really good advice, that's going to make a huge difference to a child's life, wow! Brilliant. Exactly what I'm here for, right?

But I suppose that's what I really want to see happen that, "Well, let's not wait and see." It's similar to now, if you get a cold, stay home from work. Let's just do what's sensible.

So I want to eliminate that wait and see. So the profession itself are looking at how do we make that happen? How do we target general practitioners? And actually just have that really simple message, which is actually, it's not kind to wait. If you've got concerns, it'd be really, really nice to see. And not just for pediatrics, that's just my world.

Megan Walker: Grabbed early.

Tim Kittel: Yeah. Anybody that comes in because communication can happen at any particular point. The way that we communicate as a teenager or in the workplace is very different how we communicate in kindy or reception or anything along those lines. So, when you go to a doctor, if you've got a concern, you've actually had to get into your car and drive to the doctor's office. So there's obviously a concern, let's do something about it. So that's what I would like to see happen.

And it's something we're working really hard towards. Over The next year or so.

Megan Walker: Well, fantastic. And then in terms of speech pathologists working with other disciplines, what's your thoughts there?

Tim Kittel: Look, I think that that's vital. Absolutely vital. And I think quite often it makes sense that speech pathologists have had to try and work out what it is that we do. What is our range of practice? Because you have those kinds of conversations like you were having at your conference that, "Oh, people need to know what it is that we kind of do." But I also think that speech pathologists need to know what it is that other professions do as well.

And I think psychology does this incredibly well. So psychology is in organisational psychology is a branch of psychology, that's working within business. But I also think that places like occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech pathology, actually it's time for us to be not moving into, but actually really understanding areas like engineering or coding or human resources and not necessarily that sort of multidisciplinary traditional, we all stick together as allied health practitioners. But when it comes to diversity, I'm not just thinking about cultural diversity or background or linguistic diversity. But I'm also really interested in people who were engineers and then became speech pathologists.

People can have those different professions and mix those together and what you can come out with. And if you don't have that background, well then talking to other people about their professional. I think speech pathology and law would actually merge together incredibly well because so much of law is about telling a story-

Megan Walker: Communications.

Tim Kittel: Getting organised. What does a contract actually really mean? Actually having somebody being able to translate legal documents into a way that's much more open for everyone? Well, isn't that a better world? I think that we do. We're really working out with a professional use, but we do actually need to be moving into and not just traditional health backgrounds. So many.

Megan Walker: Yeah. Interesting. I've just written down health storytelling, in all its forms communication.

Tim Kittel: Yeah. Precisely. Precisely.

Megan Walker: And so with that in mind, what would you say to any of the speech pathologists who are listening, also we've got lots of other disciplines and therapists listening as well. So this is your opportunity, go forth and do well message. Tim, what have you got for us?

Tim Kittel: I honestly think that the best advice is to not listen to any advice that you don't deliberately ask for. So I actually think that... And the reason why I think that is because I think that everybody in allied health has a very, very different journey. And that's what I love about being in our allied health. Quite often, this has been lovely. This has probably been the most I've spoken about myself in a long time because I'm much more interested in other people's stories and their journeys. And why are you working in this particular area? What motivates you about that stuff? So everybody's really, really different. So I suppose don't listen to advice unless you actually really need it because there's an area that you're really, really interested in. So I can really only tell you advice that has worked for me. And advice that's worked for me personally, is actually watching people and learning from people in terms of how they interact with others and what they do.

Tim Kittel: So I have learned something from every line manager that I've ever had in my life about how to manage, how to communicate with people in an effective way. Some of it good. And some of it kind of, "Oh, I would probably avoid that sort of thing." Both of those things are equally good.

And also learning from colleagues as well about how they interact with and all that stuff. I had a student last year and I learnt so much from that student about to do interact with small kids and just having that ability to just stop and listen. She was amazing. But you need to have that ability, I think, to just sort of stop and kind of go, "What's this person doing? Are they doing it well? Could I give that a bit of a go?" Yeah?

Which I think is. Yeah. The only advice that has worked for me real personally, I think could work for most people.

Megan Walker: It's so wise not listening. A light bulb off when you said listening to all sorts of unsolicited advice, that's changing your lane too often, isn't it? You didn't ask for that. So you're going to get shiny shiny syndrome. My favorite saying, I just talk in sayings and pictures, but my favorite one is driving from Brisbane to the Gold Coast and getting off at every exit. That would be like listening to every piece of advice. Get in your lane and go. I love that. That's fantastic. Tim, is there anything else that you wanted to say or you wanted me to ask you that I haven't?

Tim Kittel: Look, I think that we've proved that you and I could probably chat for absolutely ages. Couldn't we Megan?

Look, I think that personally it's okay to not happy having a brilliant day in allied health. A lot of allied health people are in it to improve the entire world. And sometimes we'll fall short. I think it's important that we're actually kind to ourselves.

So one of the pieces of advice that I did listen to was every minute of therapy really, really counts. You've only got an hour in a week maximum and you've got to make as much change as absolutely possible. And I ran myself ragged actually really skipping the person that's actually in that room and really working on a program. And to be fair, I think I didn't interpret that advice in exactly the right way. I actually think that there is no such thing as perfect therapy hour. But as long as you have got that intention that you're there to make somebody's life better and you listen to them and hear them, then that's okay. That's a good use of an hour.

Megan Walker: All coming from the right place. And hit the reset button.

Tim Kittel: Yeah. Exactly. And allied health is a fun place to be in. You can still take it seriously and it can still be fun.

Megan Walker: Yes. Good on you. So interesting talking to you, this has been really refreshing. It's just fascinating to be, oh, there's so many things, the international board with all of those amazing people in one room and the brains trust of that. Oh gosh, it's a conversation for another day. Tim, we'll wrap it up there. Thank you so much. And we'll include the link to the Speech Pathology Australia website if people want more information where you're watching this video. And yeah. Thanks so much again for your time it's been just a delight talking to you.

Tim Kittel: It's been a lot of fun. Thank you, Megan.

Megan Walker: Thank you.

 

Links

Speech Pathology Australia website: www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au

Speech Pathology Australia has commissioned a landmark project: Speech Pathology 2030 – making futures happen. The aim of this project is to engage members of the profession in the development of a shared vision for how the profession will successfully respond to change over the next decade and beyond. More information: 

https://www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au/SPAweb/whats_on/Speech_Pathology_2030/SPAweb/What_s_On/SP2030/Speech_Pathology_2030.aspx?hkey=3fad1937-a20e-4411-8b46-369f61570456