Monmouth University
An Introduction to Aphasia for Law Enforcement
How many students heard the message of your project?
100
Project Description:
The goal of our CRASH Project is to promote safe driving and create effective communication for individuals with aphasia by educating the community and law enforcement. Aphasia affects each person differently, but the primary challenge is being able to express themselves, which can make interactions such as traffic stops, accidents, or emergencies with law enforcement difficult. Our project aims to improve communication by creating Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) boards. The AAC boards are for individuals with aphasia to express themselves in high-stress situations.
School/Community Engagement:
First, we turned to social media to create flyers and posts to spread the word about our events and share information on street safety and aphasia. At Monmouth University Speech and Language Clinic, we hosted an informational table to educate clients with and without aphasia. For the clients with aphasia who were able to drive, we introduced strategies to help them interact with law enforcement. We also encouraged student clinicians to incorporate these materials into therapy sessions, ensuring that clients had the tools to navigate their interactions with the police safely. We also set up an informational table at Monmouth University to educate students about our project and raise awareness about sharing the road with drivers who have aphasia. Lastly, we had a presentation at the Monmouth Police Department to inform them about the prevalence of drivers with aphasia and the necessary attempts they can make to ensure safe interactions with everyone.
Creativity:
Since we are a group of future SLPs, we wanted to connect the speech mechanism to street safety. It was fun to create a playful logo and think outside the box artistically, designing a logo of a mouth and tongue turning into an intersection to raise awareness of our mission.
Use of Resources:
To deliver our project, we reached out to various local police departments to gauge interest in our project. To get our word out, we utilized social media sites and local news articles. After the presentations, we utilized surveys to get an understanding of our presentation and assess our work.
Evaluation and Impact:
We created a survey that was intended for Law Enforcement officers to take both before and after they received the training as well as post-training conversations. Both surveys contained the same questions, allowing us to see the impact of our training. Overall, the officers expressed an increased knowledge about Aphasia and strategies that they can use to communicate with individuals who have Aphasia across various settings.
PROJECT MEDIA
