Speech Therapist Skills Assessment

• Are you a qualified speech therapist?
• Under the age of 45 and in good health?
• Fluent in English?

Then emigrating to Australia could be an option for you!
Continue reading to find out:

• How to emigrate to as a speech therapist.
• If you qualify for residency in Australia.
• The immigration process to follow.

Introducing ANZSCO

ANZSCO, short for ‘Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations’, plays a very important part in your emigration journey and is the first place we’re going to explore.
ANZSCO publish the Medium and Long-term Strategic Skills List ( MLTSSL). This is the list of occupations that Australia needs to fill market labour gaps. In other words it is the list of occupations that may be elgible to qualify for residency in Australia.

It’s an exclusive club with only 176 occupations currently listed on it. If your occupation is not one of the 176, skilled independent emigration to Australia is unfortunately not going to be an option for you.

Here’s the good news – speech therapists, or speech pathologists, are on the MLTSSL . However, it’s only the first piece of the puzzle. Each occupation on the MTLSSL has a code, skill level and assessing authority associated with it.

You have to meet the various requirements attached to each of these qualifiers in order to be eligible for emigration to Australia. Let’s explore these in detail…

ANZSCO Code

The ANZSCO code assigned to speech therapists is 252712. This code gives us with more details as to the criteria speech therapists has to meet in order to qualify to emigrate to Australia.

The first thing we look at is the group that speech therapists fall under:

Major Group: 2 – Professionals | Sub-Major Group: 25 – Health Professionals | Minor Group: 252 – Health Therapy Professionals | Unit Group: 2527 – Audiologists and Speech Pathologists Therapists 

As you can see there are four groups showing how the code is made up – we are mostly interested in the code (252712) which is specific to speech pathologists.

Description of Role

This part of the ANZSCO criteria lays out a broad description of what a speech therapist is supposed to be able to do:

Provides diagnostic assessment and management of disorders of communication and swallowing through direct intervention, education, consultancy, advocacy, or a combination of these approaches.

Required Skill Level

Speech therapists, along with most occupations in this unit group, are an occupation at Skill Level 1.

Occupations at this Skill Level must have a level of skill commensurate with a bachelor degree or higher qualification.

At least five years of relevant experience may substitute for the formal qualification. In some instances, relevant experience and/or on-the-job training may be required in addition to the formal qualification.

Tasks

When applying for emigration as a speech therapist, you must be able to demonstrate or prove that you can perform the majority of the tasks below:

• Administering and interpreting a wide range of audiometric tests to determine hearing efficiency and locate sites of detected hearing problems.
• Interpreting audiometric test results alongside other medical, social and behavioural diagnostic data.
• Evaluating total response pattern and acoustic tests to distinguish between organic and non-organic hearing loss.
• Planning, directing and participating in counselling, speech reading and other rehabilitation programs.
• Prescribing appropriate hearing aids and instructing patients in use.
• Administering tests and observing patients to determine nature and extent of disorders.
• Planning and conducting programs of remedial exercise to correct disorders such as stuttering and abnormal articulation.
• Administering individual and group therapy for rehabilitation of patients with communication problems caused by defective hearing, cerebral palsy, surgery and injury.
• Advising on treatment for children with difficulties in learning to speak.
• Counselling and guiding language-handicapped individuals, their families, teachers and employers.

Important to Note

Unless you qualified in Australia or New Zealand, your qualification means nothing at this stage.

Seeing as you’re reading this, it’s unlikely that you have qualified in either country.

That means registration or licensing is required. In other words, you can’t just arrive in Australia and start working.

You’ll have to get formally assessed to prove to the Australian authorities that you meet Australia’s immigration criteria.

Job First?

Most people start their emigration journey by looking for a job in Australia. This is understandable, since emigrating with a job already secured makes moving to another country much less daunting.

However, starting with the job is not the best way to go about emigrating.

You want to start with an assessment to see if you qualify for a visa and by obtaining any required licenses and registrations.

Here’s why – if you don’t know if you’re eligible to apply for a visa and are unlicensed, most Australian employers will be hesitant to extend a job offer to you.

The golden rule? Assessment first, finding a job second.