When I told a friend in Mumbai that I was coming there in March to headhunt for a speech therapist, she reacted in mock horror: “Don’t you dare come and poach in our territory!” she warned. “We need all the speech therapists ourselves.”

Now I know Vibha was teasing. But at the same time, there was an element of truth in her concern. Speech therapists are worth their weight in gold, and good ones are worth triple that. They are also painfully hard to find and the search grows increasingly desperate as more and more people around the country understand the value of the profession. The demand far outpaces the supply and many who are available are not particularly good. Pediatric speech therapists are virtually unheard of in India and creative, imaginative professionals are rare.

So what to do? We all budget for speech therapists and we all are willing to pay more than we can afford if we find someone. The problem is that we can’t find anyone. Good training institutes are almost as rare as good therapists (the one at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences actually closed recently!), so it’s not even just a question of motivating more kids to take up the profession. Who’s going to teach them?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, creative special educators are being pressed into service as speech therapists because whether a qualified person is there or not, the children still need therapy. At Karuna Vihar, our special educators know how to develop language skills in children with mental handicap because that’s part of what they do as teachers. They already understand child development, activity based learning and the importance of play. And so, we thought, why not develop them as speech therapists?

We had amazing success with Paula’s coming to us as a trainer for our team of special educators over 12 years ago. Through a careful, activity based approach, she was able to create a team of special educators who could rival the best anywhere in the world. We are now considering a pilot project in which we will select two or three of our best, most experienced and intelligent special educators and train them as para-speech therapists.

The course will be also open to other institutions working in the area who will be asked to sponsor one or two candidates for the course (with final selection in our hands), for a maximum of 25. It will be taught by senior speech therapists from abroad whom we will expect (as in “Expect Miracles”) to join us for six month modules.

We will find funding to cover airfare, living expenses and a modest salary. In addition to the therapist who would be responsible for most of the content of the course, there would also be consultants who would be called in for some of the related aspects (child development, mental handicap, etc.).

The training would be in functional speech therapy. The trainees would not be qualified speech therapists with a recognized degree, although we are working on getting the course recognized through the Rehabilitation council of India. They would obviously be paid more on completion of the course because they would be that much better at their jobs, but they would not be in a position to go abroad as therapists on the strength of the training they receive. What we will be doing will be creating a new breed of superbly qualified special educators.