Archive for “Fun”

A colleague recently retired. She’d been working as a Speech and Language Therapist for longer than I’ve been alive! After the bosses talked movingly about what she’d achieved, others tried to wrestle her stylish red leather briefcase from her, insisting she wouldn’t need it in retirement.

She talked about what speech therapy was like when she started out:

• Makaton was just being developed. She got involved with the charity and ensured the signing system was widely used in our area. Recently she taught the team to sign, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas!”
• The Derbyshire Language Scheme didn’t exist.
• Some children were considered “ineducable.” This changed with the 1970 Education Act, after which all school age children were entitled to an education.

I might have 30+ years ahead of me as a Speech and Language Therapist. When it’s time for me to retire, what will I tell colleagues about starting out? They may be astonished to hear that we write clinical case notes on paper by hand. We consider assessments standardised if data has been collected from 1000 children. And in this era of “inclusion” hundreds of special schools still exist.

Maybe I’ll tell them I was one of the first UK therapists to start a blog! Times are changing; what will the therapy world look like in 30 years time? (I see iPads, lots and lots of iPads!)

I recently went to Paris to eat pastries while my partner attended a conference. Lots of people at the conference were using Twitter. They commented on presentations, shared relevant links, and arranged evening soirées.

Speechies: get with the times

Okay, so it was a content strategy conference for web people, but I think therapists need to try new ways of interacting with each other too. There’s a small community of us using Twitter. You should join us.

Share information

Therapists post links to interesting content, like this information sheet about creating social stories (PDF link) which was shared by several people I follow (e.g. @specialquest).

We also ask questions and share resources. For example @speechreka asked:

Anyone has access to this?: Quick Screen for Voice and Supplementary Documents for Identifying Pediatric Voice Disorders- LSHSS vol 35:308

And then:

I’d really appreciate it if someone can share that article. And anything dealing with paediatric voice disorders. Have an ax tomorrow…lost

Shareka got several responses from around the world, and later on shared what she’d found. Excellent timing. I was expecting a voice client for an initial assessment the next day!

Join the community

Twitter is a place to have an SLT-related chat, to share struggles and successes like this one from @speechbob:

just had the school psych tell me that one of my fluency students was talking up a storm with his strategies, made me smile.

We’re a friendly bunch, so what are you waiting for? Start tweeting and pick the brains of colleagues from all over the world. I’m @RhiannanW. See you there!

I’ve caught up with lots of my old colleagues from Hackney over the last few weeks and they all greeted me the same way: “You’re famous!” They exaggerate, but a picture of me working with a child accompanies an article about the SLT service in last week’s Hackney Today. You can read a clipping of the article (PDF), or visit the Hackney Today website to see all of issue 188.

Not quite the Independent, but you have to start somewhere!