Indri Hapsari

I completed a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Universitas Indonesia. My dissertation was about children with Autism, specifically on the role of siblings in the development of social interaction in Autistic children. Then I continued on with a two-year professional Master’s degree in Child Clinical Psychology at the same university. For my Master’s, I did a study on the description of Autistic children’s social understanding through Indonesia-adapted Picture Arrangement subtest of Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children-Revised (WISC-R).

Right after graduation, I joined an international non-governmental organization (NGO) called Plan where I worked as the Children in Need of Special Protection project officer. I had the opportunity to develop programs to ensure the implementation children’s basic rights, youth & women’s empowerment, manage budgets, and collaborate with the government officials and the local NGOs in the delivery of services that concerned with children with special needs as well as conducting monitoring and evaluation of the program.

During my time in Plan, I was assigned to deliver emergency psychosocial responses for survivors of Jogja earthquake in 2006, and the evacuated community in anticipation of Mount Merapi eruption, also in 2006. Later that same year, I took an offer to work for UNICEF in Aceh as part of psychosocial program research team under the supervision of L’Aquila University, Italy and Dinas Sosial Aceh where I worked closely with children in rural areas of Aceh who were impacted by Tsunami and internal conflicts.

In the last eight years, I took up positions in the school guidance and counseling department where I had the opportunity to work for children with special needs, especially ones with speech and language difficulties. In the past two years, I have had the challenge of providing the best interventions for children whose speech and language development have not been up to par to their expected age. I found these cases among 3 to 6 year-old students.

My interest about speech and language development increased significantly when I found out that the prevalence and let alone, the intervention, has not been extensively studied in Indonesia. I believe this is my opportunity to create something of great significance to my country. This desire has been spurred on further when I received a full scholarship from Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education to complete a Ph.D in Department of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheffield.