Everybody Talks Ltd

03/09/2024

Exciting times ahead, as I get ready to expand the Everybody Talks brand into New Zealand... as I prepare for this, I'm considering an experience I had recently with a young (mostly non-verbal) client and his grandmother who seemed very eager to switch on the nursery rhymes on her phone during our session so 'he might start singing along' so I could 'see him talk'.

I wonder how many people rely on phones and screens these days to 'model' language and communication. Albeit with the best intentions, but a fatal misunderstanding that communication is a two way interaction and screens do not provide this experience.

Swedish health authorities have issued new recommendations to restrict screen time for children and adolescents.

28/02/2024

Some really important messaging in this piece - we've noticed the increasing need of children coming into schools over the course of many years (even prior to the Covid pandemic)... but it does seem that there is an increasing misunderstanding / lack of knowledge of the generally expected developmental milestones within a portion of parents which is partly driving this additional need. It also highlights the need for robust and high quality pre-school settings which are readily accessible to ALL members of society.

These issues are largely explained by lack of funding to early years services - For example, we saw the health visitor once (only once) after my child was born - that was in 2010! How many other parents are missing out on these really important visits from professionals who can identify where support needs to be put in place early on in a child's life?

On the other side of the coin, although I agree children need to be 'school ready' when they enter their reception year, what does 'school ready' look like? In my opinion, the reception year (after all, the children are only 4 years old) should be play based with an emphasis on developing and consolidating underlying skills that will ultimately set the foundation for all their future learning - play, attention, auditory discrimination, vocabulary, developing a love for books through interactive (not decoding) reading. Without these foundational skills, every subsequent year in school will be increasingly more difficult to access.

School staff report worsening school-readiness with teachers devoting more time to child-support work that parents once did

26/02/2024

It's important to recognise the figure of 3 children per classroom (around 10% of children) who present with Language Disorder, is the figure we expect to see in the general paediatric population (prior to Covid). This figure does not account for the additional number of children with language impairment we encounter in schools due to language deprivation opportunities in early childhood, let alone the extra impact that the Covid related lockdowns and closures of schools and services contributed to. Many of the schools we are supporting have experienced significant increases of children who have needs, and severity of need, in the past few years.

This increase in demand is offset against the backdrop of reduced funding for SEN services and a shortage of qualified health professionals in the UK (and actually worldwide) currently.

In the meantime, we strive to help those we can.

Kingsbridge Private Hospital, Private Hospital, Private Hospital Belfast, Private Hospital Northern Ireland

10/08/2023

08/08/2023

It's great to see young people sharing information about communication differences through enterprising ideas. Pens ordered!
https://fb.watch/mhSKBjPSi7/

02/06/2023

I've been in business 10 years this year.

This year has been tough. Employees moving on unexpectedly. School funding starting to show signs of break down which, of course, places businesses like mine under some pressure too.

But I chose to go this route in 2013 as I felt offering services into schools was the ethical way to provide private services to as many families (who couldn't afford private fees) support as possible.

Speech and Language therapy has been on the UK shortage occupation list for some while now. Covid and Brexit made things even harder for employers to find good therapists... this made employment even harder.

We are all feeling the pressure. Public and private.

However I never expected that we would get to the point where NHS Trusts are trawling LinkedIn trying to lure therapists out of their current employment.

I'm all for public services. I used to work in the NHS. But, unlike the NHS, private companies don't get given money to spend by the government to lure other people's employees away... we rely on income from our client contracts alone ... our clients who are also feeling the financial pressure of today, but who also have lots of children on their rolls who need support.

I find myself asking, where has ethics gone in this day and age? I don't trawl for others' employees... and I never will. If I have a vacancy I advertise for it and I hope that someone who WANTS a change applies for it. I don't try to persuade people who haven't approached me they NEED a change.

Today, I feel genuinely sad.

20/10/2022

October 22 is International Stuttering Awareness Day, a topic close to my heart as I work as a specialist with stutterers of all ages.

Stuttering (stammering) is a multifaceted condition that few people who have never experienced it understand. It is estimated that around 1% of the adult population stutter.

Many people think the condition is solely defined by the stutters that are visible when the person who stutters speaks. It is so much more than this and therapy approaches that only focus on the visible aspect often fall short of meaningful outcomes.

I was sent this blog, shared with me by a company I have a continuing professional development subscription with and written by Scott Yaruss (an internationally recognised expert in stuttering).

Very useful for those generalist speech and language therapists who may be at a loss of how to support children and young people with a stammer or dysfluency condition at school.

In a nutshell, communication is so much more than fluency... focus on supporting understanding of what communication is, identifying all the wonderful forms of communication the children have already mastered - build confident communicators first and foremost!

When we approach stuttering therapy from a communication perspective, we open up a whole world of positive outcomes for our students.

28/07/2022

An interesting read on the effects of screen-time on very young childrens' language development.

And, remember, lots of us (adults) are glued to our screens these days - think not just of the child being over exposed to screens and content they don't understand, but also the effects of having mum and dad around them looking at their screens at the expense of giving their child the interactions they need to help them develop their speech and language more.

Take home message: TVs and iPads don't teach communication skills.

90% of children start watching TV before the age of two (Christakis, 2009). And therefore the question about whether screentime is harmful for young children hangs over our heads. There has been guidance around this issue from various agencies such as the American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) going....

02/04/2022

Wow... it's been a long time between posts!

Sorry for the silence... I've been busy setting this up. The first multi-disciplinary membership platform for allied health, education and psychology professions in the UK.

We were excited to launch this in late February - now there's a place where:

a) members of the public can find multiple professional support for their loved ones --- in one place!
b) members of different professional groups can learn about each-other and reach out to each-other to collaborate and provide their clients the best possible multi-disciplinary service.

Not to mention all the clinical tools members get as part of their membership, business advice and well being/ mental health products too!

We're building a community of like minded professionals who want to challenge the status quo of single profession membership 'clubs'.

Know any professionals who want to be different and want to push themselves to be the best they can be? Please send them to: www.ahtnetwork.com to have a look.

We're open to our international colleagues too!

Allied Health and Therapy Network Ltd is a membership organisation for a group of allied health and education professionals and an easy point of contact for these professionals and the public.

25/07/2021

In the second instalment of my focus on the importance of visual support, it's timely that the UK government has recently announced its new autism strategy (link to a summary attached).

A quick 10 minute Google search revealed no less than 5 research articles (not blogs) supporting the importance of using visuals to support people on the autistic spectrum.

Around 71% of children with ASD attend mainstream schools (priory children's services, UK).

Visual support is used to reduce anxiety, increase predictability, support communication, improve participation in class (Rutherford & Grayson, 2019) and improve social initiation (Johnson, 2003) among other important everyday interactions and activities most of us take for granted.

There are challenges associated with creating visual supports (especially time and training) (Hayes et al., 2010) but compares those challenges with the challenges autistic people often face on a daily basis: high levels of anxiety, feeling overwhelmed, struggling to understand verbal and non verbal cues, social isolation to name a few.

I therefore welcome the £600,000 pledged to the training of education staff (less than 50% of whom report they feel confident in supporting their autistic students) but I also ask: is it enough?

The government has released its new strategy setting out how it plans to improve provision for Autistic people across England. We have summarised the key points and ways forward for those working with Autistic pupils in an education setting. -

20/07/2021

We've had a few recent conversations with special needs co-ordinators at a few of the schools we work with which suggest some of their teachers don't see the benefit of visual support in their classrooms. Therefore, we're going to put some emphasis on this over the next month into the beginning of the new academic year. Here's a little poster one of my staff has just put together, summarising some of (not all) the benefits.

22/06/2021

As it's now officially World Wellbeing Week 2021, I came across this blog, kindly created by the team at WriteUPP. I found it rather timely: with it now nearing the time when I finally pack up and move back to my homeland, the pressures of the pandemic and the ensuing clamour for support post UK lockdowns, on top of all the stresses related to emigrating are certainly weighing heavy on me at the moment.

I want to take this opportunity to say that I hope everyone is taking care of themselves out there. Remember, if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anyone else.

For this article, we spoke with licensed therapist Dawn Delgado about her advice on how to deal with and prevent professional burnout in healthcare. Dawn helps clinicians improve their self-care, set better boundaries and keep burnout at bay.