Providing speech pathology in hard-to-reach places

“I had a few younger cousins needing speech pathology and I just couldn't get my head around why my auntie and uncle and the kids would have to take a whole day off to travel to another town to get the help they needed.

“So, from a young age, I became passionate about having speech pathology services in rural and remote towns like Ayr. It was what I had my head and my heart set on, and I followed that.”

After graduating from JCU in 2010 with a Bachelor of Speech Pathology, Jenna chose Mount Isa as her first destination, taking up a position as a school-based speech pathologist.

“I was the speech pathologist for 13 schools in the region, and I would also travel out to the Aboriginal communities around there, too. In Mount Isa, I discovered that I was one of only two speech pathologists, which just didn’t make sense to me as there was so much demand for our services. That experience just put more fuel in my fire to bring more speech pathology services to where they’re needed most.”

Jenna’s next role saw her in Charters Towers with a position shared between the Department of Health and Department of Education. During this time, she worked on a project that involved trialling telehealth speech pathology services for families who were unable to access speech pathology services due to remote living.

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