Latvia: Managing Children with Developmental Language Disorder

One of the first and most famous speech and language therapists (SLTs) of Latvia was Elfrida Lauva and her teacher in speech therapy was Emil Fröschel (1884–1972) in Vienna (see Austrian vignette). Lauva was the first SLT with a certified diploma in Latvia in 1938 and she also organized the first training courses for teachers who wished to become SLTs (Trinite, 2011). During the period 1955–1960, training for the profession of speech and language therapy (SLT) was acquired mainly in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and Moscow and many ideas of SLT were gained from there, including ideas on the child’s language development and its problems. In 1962 the first group of 15 students was organized to train for the profession logoped (speech and language therapist) in Latvia. It was in Liepaja Pedagogical institute (now Liepaja University).