4 Reasons Why You Can’t Get Speech Therapy Services

So there are four reasons why you can't get speech therapy services right now in 2024. And this is just going to be worse in the long run unless there's some sort of government intervention. So the first thing is that there's a backlog of pandemic cases, right? So whoever was born during the COVID times and needed services, they got pushed back when right now it's like 224, right? If we talk about you trying to get an assessment, who do you think is going to be served first? Of course the pandemic babies, right? So then it creates a two year vacuum of cases that keeps on getting pushed back, right? Because the services didn't get more. The number of babies being born, it hasn't gone down that much. And also right now the assessment for autism spectrum disorder or speech and language delay is actually increasing. So we actually have a huge problem of this backlog. Right. The second reason is that there's not enough therapists, full stop. And the reason is because for speech therapists, our industry, we can choose between children and adult cases. And because the population is becoming older, right? We're having a population that's shrinking and developed countries. The reason why you're watching me in English on YouTube is because you're from a developed country. Like 80% of people who are watching this, I know this for a fact. What happens is a lot of resources went into the older generation. And that's certainly a fact when where I'm from in Hong Kong, a lot of therapists are opting to be taking adult cases just because there's more money there, there's more cases there and you don't need to blow bubbles and run around, right? Not everyone likes to hang out with kids for like eight hours straight and, you know, get really tired and they can't even talk to their spouse. So that happened to me. I couldn't even talk to my girlfriend now wife. And I also had to work on Saturdays. So that also kind of cut into the whole lifestyle of becoming a therapist. And so a lot of people who I know, the colleagues, they tend to go gravitate towards adult cases. I can't talk about other things, other industries. I know a little bit about ABA therapy, but at the same time, ABA therapy has one of the most and highest replacement rates. People just leave because they didn't get an education specific for aba. So it's basically natural selection. If you try the job, you like it, you stay. But then not a lot of people went in knowing, oh my God, it's behavioral therapy. It's therapy, it's psychology related. It's treating autistic children. That's very good. But they don't understand when they went, they didn't know what they were going into. So therefore there's a huge rate of turnover. Okay. The third reason is because of the waiting list and so on. And how the therapy model was traditionally built is that it's not scalable. The therapy model is just not. All right, we have a lot of one on ones and we need one on ones to work, right? We really require to sit in a room with a child one on one to assess and see what's going on. But at the same time, it's something that's not scalable. This is a business and a model that cannot go beyond a certain level. And it's worse than the gym, right? A gym at least some people can come, some people don't. People pay a monthly subscription, so on and so forth. But a therapy model is that once you're at capacity, you can't do anymore. And so that's one of the leading causes to why you can't get speech therapy services is because you're always waiting for someone to graduate. But the problem is if a child is delayed, most of the time they will require at the very least to have six months of therapy. And the best case scenario. So if you're talking about the percentage of best case and worst case scenarios, you know, like you need to wait at least six months and therefore we're not pumping enough therapists out there, people are quitting and you know, like speech therapy services aren't very like they are profitable. But then it's not a very scalable business that a lot of people want to get into. It takes a lot of knowledge and know how to do it. Well, I see in developed countries therapy centers are popping up here and there. I've been to and I've seen therapy centers in Indonesia and I can tell you that most of them don't really know what the heck is going on. I mean the therapists themselves. So if you trying to scale a therapy clinic, it's super hard because a lot of resources have to go in to teach a therapist from ground up. And even when I started after I got my master's degree, does it mean that I'm automatically capable to deal with all cases? It's not. I needed a lot of help from my supervisors to teach me a lot of stuff. So that's just the reasoning behind it. And that's why when the, therap the therapists get questions that they don't know how to answer. With parents, it really hurts their ego. And it becomes like a cycle of, oh, they're not good enough. I shouldn't be doing this. They change jobs, turnover rate. A new one comes, and it's a bad experience for everyone. So I'm. I'm not poo pooing on the whole clinic model. I'm just saying that it's hard. It's really hard. I've been poached a few times to open a clinic. I have really. I know what work needs to go in to make this a superb service. Okay. And the last thing is what I just said. It's just high educational standards for any type of therapy work. So myself, I have a master's degree. Not everyone has a master's degree. We had that year of my graduating class, we had 45 people going in and 27 people going out. And, you know, I think law school or whatever, professional services, they won't have such a low graduation rate. And that's because as the people go into speech therapy, they're like, oh, my God. Actually, like, 80% of the time, I'm blowing bubbles and trying to sing songs with kids. Which part of that is professional. And you also get like, 90% of my classmates and my colleagues are women. So what happens is that they cannot sustain such a high workload and they go into part time and they also become moms, right? When that happens, they might even quit. And you're left with like 10% or less of male people like myself. But then the problem is you don't earn a lot as a speech therapist. That's number one. Number two is, like, with such high educational standards, right? People who I know have doctorates, like PhDs, the guys. And they move into a teaching job, right? They move into. They cannot look at themselves in a suit blowing bubbles until they're like 40 to 50. And I'm just being honest. That's how I feel as well. Right. And that's why I'm making videos, although I would enjoy myself. But then the problem is, after learning so much, the lifespan of a, of a therapist who's in the field isn't that much, and there isn't a lot out there. And if there are, then, you know, they're probably all booked out and they're burning out. If you don't trust me for some reason, go to Reddit and look at the speech therapy or ABA therapist subreddit. It's always about, like, therapy burnout. A lot of written documents, people who are actually, like, having master's degrees, PhDs, smart people, hardworking people, and they're dying. And that's why you probably cannot get speech therapy services. And what should you do as a parent when you're struggling? The first thing is this whole channel was designed to teach parents, parents. So if you're a therapist watching this, by all means, learn as much as you can. But all this was made for parents. And the reason why is because after the pandemic, I realized we really need parents to know what the heck is going on and how to treat children in their own homes, or else we'll never break out of this model. And it's only going to get worse unless we do something about it or, you know, suddenly we have loads of jobs and funding from the government, which has happened before and has saved a lot of children. But at the same time, all I hear right now as of 2024 is the lack of services in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, even in developing countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and not to mention, like, really expensive places like Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore. These cities are having a hard time. It really is. So if you have the time in the world and you have the luxury that you have, like, I don't know, 30 minutes a day, and we always start with 10 to 15 minutes a day, you should really invest in some knowledge for yourself and it doesn't need to be from us. Right? Agents of Speech is just one of many companies out there that teaches parent coaching that does that and parent education. So if you want to learn with us, by all means, you can go to ww.agentsofspeech.com course and you get free online courses that start from zero words all the way up to sentence building and more. Right. We tackle a lot of problems in there. And you'll find a bunch of parents around 7,000 something right now as of this recording, and go there and ask parents there about how they got to where they are. Okay, so that's it for this video. I hope to see you in the next one. See ya.