Since 2023, EIU CDS faculty and students have partnered with Mico CARE Centre in Jamaica to provide speech therapy services to children who would not otherwise have access to services. There are fewer than 10 speech therapists in Jamaica, with none in the schools and most in private practice. All CDS graduate student clinicians have an 8 week practicum assignment of providing on-line speech therapy to children in Jamaica once per week. This gives EIU clinicians exposure to providing on-line therapy and considering the cultural-linguistic differences of their clients in Jamaica. CDS faculty have licenses to practice speech therapy in Jamaica. This allows EIU to have a year-round partnership with Mico CARE Centre, providing on-line speech therapy services in the fall and spring terms and therapy abroad trips to Jamaica. Please see this brief handout with information, pictures, and quotes from EIU students who have participated in the on-line Jamaica therapy practicum and/or therapy abroad to Jamaica with CDS faculty. If you would like to see more detailed day to day pictures of an annual therapy abroad trip to Mico CARE Centre in St Ann's Bay with short student reflections about the experience, it is available here.
Mico CARE Centre has 3 locations, including Kingston and St Ann's Bay Jamaica. They are associated with a teacher-training university Mico College University and provide multi-disciplinary evaluations for children who are struggling in school. This handout tells more about the services at Mico. Since special education services are limited in Jamaica, Mico CARE Centres also have classrooms where children can attend classes for 6 months to 2 years and receive services to try to help them make progress in delayed academic areas before returning to their home schools. Mico CARE Centres have also started some of the first classrooms for children with Autism in Jamaica. EIU faculty from Special Education and CDS have met with professionals from Jamaica when they visited EIU's Autism Center and other Autism programs across Missouri and Central Illinois. EIU faculty in Special Education and CDS have been consulting and assisting as Mico CARE Centre implements increased services for children with Autism.
CDS faculty advisors often work with EIU's study abroad program to assist CDS students in choosing from other traditional study abroad opportunities such as taking a course in the summer or spending a whole semester at a university in another country. Speech therapy programs in England and Australia have similarities to university education in the US. There are also EIU faculty-led study abroad programs that offer a summer course option in places like Italy, England, and others. CDS faculty can also share other Therapy Abroad opportunities operated by entities outside of EIU.
CDS faculty have also partnered with speech therapists in Trinidad and Tobago. Graduate students in the speech therapy program at the University of West Indies in Trinidad have done class projects with EIU graduate students and have traveled to Illinois to observe services in hospitals and schools in the US.
2100 Human Services
217-581-2712
217-581-7105
fymagee@eiu.edu
