Thursday is International Stuttering Awareness Day, and the annual online conference, featuring papers written about stuttering and other speech disorders, is in full swing.

In its recent round of funding cuts Dr. Jack Kitts, CEO of the Ottawa Hospital, announced that the Stuttering Treatment Clinic will close at the end of October 2015.

Reasons given by the Hospital for closing the clinic are: stuttering is not an illness requiring medical expertise, and the Hospital’s mandate is to care for Eastern Ontario’s “sickest” individuals and to not fund services that can be provided in the community.