Joanna’s passion is working with children with developmental language disorder. She also enjoys working with children and youth with speech disorders, stuttering, social communication difficulties, and with caregivers for young children with delayed language development.
Joanna had previously served as a psychologist with the Ministry of Education for over two years, working with teachers and fellow psychologists to assess and support children with various developmental learning needs. In order to work more directly with the caregivers and children with these learning needs, she furthered her studies in the area of speech and language pathology. She has worked at a local hospital since 2011 serving the paediatric population, and took on a leadership role in 2014 to improve services provided by the paediatric communication team of speech therapists and to educate new clinicians.
Joanna works very closely with caregivers, families and teachers of the children she sees. She works well with the other professionals in a multi-disciplinary setting, to ensure holistic care for the children and their families. She enjoys working with and supervising new speech therapists or student clinicians. She believes strongly in advocating for the children she sees and educating the public about their conditions, and has responded to media queries about such content, which has been published in the local newspapers.