Vale Karen Bloomberg

Communication is fundamental to life. You know it’s how you can have control over what happens to you and with you, so I think communication is a basic right, and have always come from the premise that everyone communicates, and we need communication partners that are respectful of how various people communicate in different ways. (Bloomberg, 2018)

These are Karen Bloomberg’s words, spoken on the day she was inducted into the Victorian Disability Lifetime Achievement Honour Roll. Throughout her speech pathology career, Karen worked with people with severe communication impairments, later referred to as complex communication needs, in special developmental schools, mainstream schools, adult day services, and group homes. She also worked in consultative and educational capacities, particularly in services that were part of Scope Victoria. This extensive experience provided insights into the lack of understanding about the communication of people who do not have access to speech, the lack of suitable communication assessment tools and resources, and the failure of services to meet their needs.

Australasian Society for Intellectual Disability (ASID) members will be familiar with Karen’s work. Those of us who were fortunate to work with her witnessed Karen’s passionate commitment to people with severe communication impairments, and within this group, people with severe to profound intellectual disabilities. Along with colleagues, Hilary Johnson, Denise West, Teena Caithness, Elizabeth Brownlie, and others, Karen’s life work contributed to services and organisations dedicated to promoting recognition of and support for the communication of people with the most severe disabilities.

In the early 1980s, as a new speech pathology graduate in New South Wales, I soon became aware of the many developments emanating from Victoria that marked the beginnings of the field of Augmentative and Alternative Communication. It was in Victoria, through the efforts of Karen Bloomberg, Hilary Johnson, and their close colleagues that Key Word Sign was developed, building on the work in MAKATON started in the United Kingdom, in which signs, up until that point considered only for the Deaf, were being introduced to people with severe disabilities. They also developed early communication systems, contributing to some of the earliest work in symbol systems (COMPIC),¹ and one of the first dedicated electronic communication devices with voice output (VOCRISS).² In recognition of the value of colleagial support, they formed the Australian Group on Severe Communication Impairment, while Karen provided Australian representation on the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication as a founding member of the board. Open to clinicians, teachers, parents, and people with severe communication impairments, the early Australian Group on Severe Communication Impairment newsletters prepared by Karen and Hilary were shared across Australia.

Aware of developments overseas, Karen joined a graduate program at Purdue University, completing a Masters of Science (Audiology & Speech Pathology), focusing on augmentative and alternative communication in 1984. In doing so, Karen became the first Australian speech pathologist to obtain a postgraduate qualification in augmentative and alternative communication and developed research skills under the tutorage of international leaders in the field – Lyle Lloyd and George Karlan. Her Masters research addressed one of the field’s earliest questions about features of symbol systems that contributed to how well their meanings were recognised (Bloomberg et al., 1990). However, it was her research in Australia that provided the groundwork required to lobby for services for people with severe communication impairments. Reported as a two-part demographic study (Bloomberg & Johnson, 1990; Johnson & Bloomberg, 1988), Karen and Hilary completed painstaking data collection involving direct phone calls to speech pathologists, or where none were employed, senior staff members within organisations or facilities that provided services or had access to people with disabilities. Using a mailed questionnaire, they obtained demographic details about service users and information about the provision of speech pathology services. They also made direct visits to institutions. This research stood out for the number of facilities contacted (1,250) and the response rate of 85%, achieved through sheer determination of the researchers. The data obtained revealed at least 5,000 individuals with severe communication imairments lived across Victoria, with two-thirds in metropolitan Victoria (Bloomberg & Johnson, 1990); further, speech pathology services to these individuals were limited, and where it was provided, under-resourced. These critical data supported the funding of a trial of a program dedicated to this group, which became known as the Severe Communication Impairment Outreach Program; it was also used in the United States to lobby for payment of augmentative and alternative communication supports by Medicaid. Later, they repeated this important work (Perry et al., 2004), updating the demographic data to convince the Victorian State Government to dedicate funding to people with complex communication needs, through the Communication Resource Centre (now the Communication and Inclusion Resource Centre, Scope) and related services.

Karen’s clinical and research reputation, nationally and internationally, also developed through one of the first texts on communication in people who are non-speaking (Bloomberg & Johnson, 1991), in which best practice in multimodal communication was described in a collection of chapters authored by clinicians. Further, her painstaking work in increasing the sensitivity of support workers to the communicative behaviours of adults who are non-speaking resulted in the Triple C: Checklist of Communicative Competencies (Bloomberg & West, 1999), which remains one of few assessment tools suitable for this group. Keen to ensure its use was based on evidence, she lead its revision (Bloomberg et al., 2009) following research into the validity and reliability of the Triple C (Iacono et al., 2005; 2009).

Karen was a driving force in development of the InterAACtion package, a rich resource for support workers, clinicians, educators, and families (Bloomberg et al., 2004). Other resources she played a substantial role in developing include video clips demonstrating multimodal communication and supporting the use and dissemination of Key Word Signs and the Triple C, and written and other educational materials, which will continue to inform generations of speech pathologists.

In her professional life, Karen’s achievements, only a few of which have been noted here, were acknowledged by the augmentative and alternative communication, speech pathology, and the broader disability fields. Her death, on the 27^th January, 2022, has been felt deeply and globally. She leaves a legacy that reflects the person she was – a champion of people with the most severe disabilities, a valued colleague, and a close and much loved friend within many communities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 COMmunication PICtographs.

2 A portable voice output communication aid, which is individually programmed with vocabulary items chosen by the user.