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Rosemary Crossley

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Rosemary Crossley AM (born 1945) started developing communication aids in the 1970’s when she was working at St Nicholas Hospital, a state institution for children with severe cerebral palsy in Melbourne, Australia. The institution and her work there is described in Annie’s Coming Out (1980) written with Anne McDonald, one of her students. Crossley and McDonald advocated for the closure of the institution which occurred after a film based on the book, directed by Gil Brealey, and also called Annie’s Coming Out, won Best Film at the Australian Film Institute Awards in 1984.

In 1986 the federal government funded Crossley and colleagues to open the first multi-disciplinary Australian centre dedicated to providing access to Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) called the DEAL (Dignity, Education, Advocacy, Language) Communication Centre. After McDonald’s death in 2010 it was renamed the Anne McDonald Centre.

DEAL provided free services to children and adults with little or no speech regardless of diagnosis. In the 1980’s there was a limited range of AAC options, and many clients arrived without the basic hand skills needed to use those that did exist. Crossley and the DEAL therapy team developed a treatment program called Facilitated Communication Training (FCT). Trainees practised using communication aids with support while they also carried out exercises to improve their hand/eye co-ordination skills so they could use appropriate aids without support. The first video of a client with autism progressing through the program from hand support to typing on an Apple2E without support was shown at the 1988 conference of ISAAC (the International Society for AAC) in Anaheim.

The 1988 conference presentation generated wide interest, and versions of the FCT program were introduced in USA under the title Facilitated Communication (FC). While some programs involved multi-disciplinary teams providing professional assessment and training for communication aid users and their partners, many did not. As a result of some egregious failures FC has become controversial, with the outcomes of those who used FCT to achieve fluent independent communication being ignored.

Crossley has published several more books, including Facilitated Communication Training (Teachers College Press, 1994) and Speechless (Dutton, 1997). She has delivered presentations and workshops at many peer-reviewed international and national AAC conferences, including all but one of the 15 ISAAC conferences since 1988, and published articles in peer-reviewed journals. She has been invited to deliver AAC and FCT training programs in a number of countries including Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, UK and USA.


Rosemary Crossley has a PhD from Victoria University, Australia and is a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).[1]

Bibliography

  • The Dole Cookbook (Collingwood: Outback, 1978) ISBN 0-86888-219-4
  • Annie's Coming Out (Penguin Books, 1980) ISBN 0-14-005688-2
  • Facilitated Communication Training (Teachers College Press, 1994) ISBN 0-8077-3327-X
  • Speechless: Facilitating Communication for People Without Voices (1997) ISBN 0-525-94156-8

References

  1. ^ http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/honours/honour_roll/search.cfm?aus_award_id=880689&search_type=quick&showInd=true Australian Honours, 1986 citation "in recognition of service to those with severe communication disabilities"
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