Abstract
Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) has a long established service development and research programme with Sri Lankan colleagues. The Centre for International Child Health (CICH) is an academic unit with public health interests in the countries of the South. Together a group of collaborators at GOSH, CICH and in Sri Lanka worked together to plan how a cadre of health workers could be prepared to work with people with communication disabilities. This is not an uncommon aim in under-served countries and there is a small published literature about the courses which have been developed. Choices about models for training, service delivery and ensuring sustainability in emerging services for people with communication disabilities are complex. Links can be made with development work in other disciplines. The literature relating to these issues in countries such as Sri Lanka is examined.