What Makes a Caseload (Un)Manageable? School-Based Speech-Language Pathologists Speak

Abstract

Caseload size continues to be an area of concern for school-based SLPs, and efforts to address this problem must continue in order to prevent long-term struggles with SLPs' dissatisfaction, shortages, and turnover. Policy, research, and clinical implications are discussed.

Variability in Interpreting “Educational Performance” for Children With Speech Sound Disorders

“…As such, these SLPs are working with fewer children with SSD and/or are only working with children with SSD who are severely unintelligible. However, it is also possible that the SLPs with larger caseloads more frequently practice within collaborative models, as has been previously reported (Katz et al, 2010). If that is the case, then SLPs with larger caseloads may have more available resources, allowing them to consider a broader view of SSDs and to include socialemotional adjustment/behavior.…”

“…We hypothesized that an increase in the number of schools serviced is likely to affect time pressures (Biancone et al, 2014) and have potential negative effects for service delivery decisions. However, Katz et al (2010) similarly reported that the number of schools serviced was not related to how unmanageable an SLP's caseload was. Thus, it seems that the number of schools to which an SLP is assigned is not related to their service delivery decisions with respect to educational performance.…”

“…SLPs' decision making can be affected by job characteristics such as caseload size, number of schools serviced, and years of experience (Blood, Ridenour, Thomas, Qualls, & Hammer, 2002;Brandel & Frome Loeb, 2011;Katz, Maag, Fallon, Blenkarn, & Smith, 2010). Caseload size has been associated with job satisfaction (Blood et al, 2002), program intensity (Brandel & Frome Loeb, 2011), and caseload manageability (Katz et al, 2010). In turn, job satisfaction has been found to be predictive of therapy quality (Biancone, Farquharson, Justice, Schmitt, & Logan, 2014).…”

“…Across multiple studies, SLPs with more years of experience report greater job satisfaction (Blood et al, 2002;Pezzei & Oratio, 1991). SLPs with more years of experience have also reported feeling that their caseload is more manageable compared to SLPs with fewer years of experience (Katz et al, 2010). As such, it is important to consider job characteristics that can affect SLPs' decision making, including how they interpret the concept of educational performance when determining eligibility of services for children with SSDs.…”

Individual Education Program (IEP) Paperwork : A Narrative Review

“…The similar condition applied for other professionals dealing with students with special needs. From the survey of professionals dealing with special needs education (e.g., speech language pathologist), the main challenge they face is the high number of administrative tasks, That is about 60% of the administrative burden they have to perform (26) and in the year of 2001 to 2010, the percentage was higher, about 80-88%(28).…”