More than 1,500 parents of children undergoing speech therapy have sent letters to President Zoran Milanović, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and Health Minister Irena Hrstić, the Croatian Association of Entrepreneurial Speech Therapists (HALP) reported on Thursday. The letters were sent to the association with a request that they be forwarded to the officials.
The trigger for the letters is the new minimum technical requirements for private speech therapy practices, prescribed under the Speech Therapy Act. A large number of practices do not meet these conditions, and parents warn in their letters that children could be left without timely help if a solution is not found before the practices are forced to close.
Parents state that many families use private practices because they cannot obtain timely help elsewhere, and ask where their children will continue their therapy. They also say they cannot understand why a child, due to the height of the ceiling or the prescribed square footage of the space, would have to lose therapy in a practice where they are making progress. They are also concerned by the inconsistent messages coming from various representatives of the Ministry of Health, and ask when the prescribed conditions will be reviewed.
They ask President Milanović to support the preservation of therapy accessibility, urge the Government and the Ministry of Health to engage in urgent dialogue with parents and speech therapists, and receive their representatives. From Prime Minister Plenković and Minister Hrstić, they demand that the disputed minimum technical conditions be reconsidered, that professionally grounded and feasible standards be accepted, and that realistic adaptation deadlines be ensured. If the conditions are not changed, they expect a concrete plan to preserve therapy for every affected child, as well as a public response and concrete steps before the deadlines expire.
According to a HALP survey, 85 per cent of private speech therapy practices do not meet the new conditions, and 40 per cent of them will permanently cease operations. As a result, at least 7,000 users, mostly children, could be left without therapy. The deadline for compliance is July 2027.
At a meeting on Tuesday, the Ministry of Health asked HALP and the Croatian Speech Therapy Society to agree on a joint proposal for amendments.
