RCSLT - Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists

RCSLT News June 2023: current themes; professional development; and comings and goings

• The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists • Season 4 • Episode 11

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 12:46

Please let us know what you think of this podcast.

In RCSLT's June 2023 podcast:

  • Current themes in speech and language therapy including: an ageing society; workforce; SEND review; Community rehabiliation
  • Professional development issues: NHSE (formerly HEE) projects coming to a close and achievements there; new support worker hub; professional development framework. For members, remember that the HCPC audit is coming in July so please get ready by updating your CPD diary.
  • Where RCSLT has been recently and who has been to see us.

Useful links:

This interview was conducted by Victoria Harris, Head of Learning at The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and features Derek Munn, Director of Policy and Public Affairs and Judith Broll, Director of Professional Development, at the RCSLT.


Please be aware that the views expressed are those of the guests and not the RCSLT.




MUSIC PLAYS: 00:00:00-00:00:06 

 

HOST:                      Hello. It’s Monday 19 June, and I’m here with Derek Munn RCSLT’s Director of Policy and Public Affairs for our regular lovely catch up. We’re thrilled to be joined by Judith Broll, who is the Director of Professional Development of the RCSLT. She is going to help us to walk through the many issues relating to professional development in speech and language therapy. Good morning both of you.

 

DEREK:                    00:00:28 Hello.

 

JUDITH:                   00:00:29 Good morning.

 

HOST:                      00:00:30 Thank you for joining today. I wonder if I could start with you, Judith. What are some of the key themes coming through your work at the moment please?

 

JUDITH:                   00:00:39 Thank you Vicky. Hello everybody. I think one of the main issues that we’ve been working on in RCSLT is around an ageing society. So, we’re working at both ends of the lifespan. And I recently went to a meeting with Chris Whitty, who is the Chief Medical Officer, and Suzanne Rastrick, who is the Chief Allied Health Professions Officer for England. 

 

They are writing a big report around an ageing society to really understand how it can be supported and also to hear about how the roles of AHPs can really support the ageing society. It was a really interesting meeting. I think there was a lot of engagement and support for the work that we do. And I think the things that I got out of it is that actually how profoundly important communication is, how to advocate for and with an elderly population. 

 

We also touched on end-of-life care and the big one, which is health inequalities, which I think runs through everything. This touched on the EDI agenda as well. If you can’t understand the language, how are you going to access any of the health or social care issues around that as well? 

 

What they are offering as well is this report has to be submitted fairly soon, but there is still an opportunity to submit some more research and evidence and best practice examples. So, if anybody has any, especially working with an elderly population, whether that’s at home, whether it’s supporting hospital avoidance, whether it’s coming out of hospital, care homes, end-of-life care, whatever you would like to offer us, please do get in touch with me. I’d love to hear how you’re doing in that space.

 

HOST:                      00:02:20 Thank you, Judith. And I’ll put a link to how to contact you in the show notes. Great, thanks. 

 

Derek, how about you, what are the key themes coming through your work at the moment?

 

KEITH:                      00:02:30 I have to say, Vicky, that for people who listen to the podcast regularly this will sound like Groundhog Day, but it needs to keep being said. The issue is around workforce morale, motivation, and vacancies across the UK remain a top priority. 

 

We will shortly be going out with our second round of the vacancies survey and it is important that people fill it in again because that trend data is key to the influencing that we need to do. 

 

The workforce planning is at different phases across the four nations. In the context of England, the NHS England plan is still awaited as we record. The Home Secretary last week said he would have given 8 or 9 out of 10 to it being launched before the NHS 75th birthday, in July. It remains to be seen. 

 

Better news. We are engaged heavily with the Department for Education at NHS England around the matters arising from the SEND review. We are closely engaged in the development of the new children’s language regional pathfinders, that’s called ELSEC, and also on the development of classroom resources and the pledge on joint workforce planning between education and health. And we’re in at the initial meetings on all of those things. On the adult side, the alliance we are part of on community rehabilitation has a ministerial meeting coming up. And we also have ministerial meetings coming up around specialist workforce and, hopefully shortly too, the major conditions strategy.

 

HOST:                      00:04:10 Thank you. And going back to you, Judith, there does seem to be a lot going on around professional development in the world of speech and language therapy at the moment, which is why you’re here today. I wonder if you can talk listeners through some of the highlights, please.

 

JUDITH:                   00:04:24 I will think of highlights. There are many exciting initiatives. I think what we’re trying to do at RCSLT is to balance what we need as a profession against the huge amount of requests coming from NHS England and right across all four nations around enhancing workforce and thinking differently about workforce. 

 

I think this is an opportunity and a challenge for all professions, and especially ours, especially in light of what Derek said just now, because I think it is a tricky time to be a clinician on the ground and I’m really mindful of that. As you may well be aware, we have had some funding from Health Education England which is now a part of NHS England, which was for all four nations. The funding came to an end in March. And we had a lot of outputs around that. For example, supporting international recruitment, preceptorships, return to practice. 

 

One piece of work which we are considering how we move forward is to think about paediatric community dysphagia and what happens once babies and their families leave neonatal care. Because at the moment, children and young people and babies who still need support have a very patchy speech and language therapy engagement, not because the skill isn’t there and the want, but actually the posts. So, we’re doing a piece of work which we’re hoping to recommend into the next year’s funding around that. But also, a lot of work that has been going on especially around the supporter hub and framework, which is finally being launched, this will link to the Allied Health Professional Support Worker Framework. And this is a specific one for speech and language therapy support workers. High time with this amazing workforce which already supports right across cradle to grave into schools as it does into rehab as well. So again, that’s something that we’re looking forward to really launching, and embedding, and evaluating. 

 

I don’t think we cannot talk about what we’ve doing without mentioning the Professional Development Framework, which is an enormous triumph of coproduced work for the profession and about the profession. I think it’s had a lot of interest both from speech and language therapists but also with other AHP bodies and Health Education England. So, I would actively encourage you to look at it and see how you can embed it. 

 

It is a very flexible framework and can be used right from the start of a career all the way through to how to plan exit from the career if you ever wanted to do that. But also, really thinking clearly or really helping to understand where you could take your professional and where you would like to go as an individual. Wellbeing is at the heart of what we do. And I think especially around the challenge of being a clinician, I think that is really important. And we can map careers across that and we’re also then going to map a lot of the competency frameworks and capability frameworks, so that it will be a very clear milestone for everybody to understand exactly where they are with their professional development.

 

Part of that but not wholly, we are doing a bespoke piece of work around advanced clinical practice. It is an area that I think speech and language therapists – I’m biased but I don’t care – can add huge value. And I think having a more formalised structure about how to support the profession to be recognised as advanced clinical practitioners is very timely, especially as we’re looking at different ways of working with the workforce. And we’re working with NHS England to really think about how we can craft the needs for the profession to deliver the best work.

 

Dare I go any further without mentioning the upcoming HCPC audit for the registered speech and language therapy workforce. If you have any questions, please do call the professional enquiries team. And members can really boost their CPD with the diary that they can have there. Thank you. 

 

HOST:                      00:08:29 Thank you, Judith, that’s a very comprehensive run through of the many, many projects that we’ve been working on. And again, links to all those things that you mentioned I’ll put in the show notes. Moving on now, I wonder if we can look at how we’ve been engaging with speech and therapy issues around the UK and indeed around the world. And maybe, I’ll start with Derek please. 

 

DEREK:                    00:08:49 Thank you. Listeners will be aware that the Royal College has had a new chief executive this year, Steve Jamieson. I’ve had the pleasure of accompanying him around the UK as he gets to know the profession. It’s a really helpful reminder just of the sheer width of what the speech and language therapy profession does. 

 

We’ve been in Northern Ireland, we’ve been in Scotland, I’ll shortly be in North Wales. And in Belfast, we visited the specialist children’s hospital and saw the work in ICU and oncology. And in Glasgow, we visited the community paediatric team and the work they do with families with incredible challenges relating to poverty and disadvantage. And then the same day, went straight on to meet the Glasgow adult’s acute team, who are working in the same city in a wholly different area with different challenges. 

 

I would mention in the context of the developed nations that we had a disappointing response from the Welsh Government to the report that the Welsh Senedd put out about the value of speech and language therapy in youth justice. So, there’s a debate coming up in the Senedd on that, and we’ll be making the point that the Welsh Government’s position seems to be because there aren’t enough speech and language therapists, you can’t extend into youth justice, to which we would say, well, the solution to that is more speech and language therapists. Better news in Northern Ireland, although the cuts there continue, the reported cut to Sure Start in Northern Ireland has been overturned. 

 

You mentioned international, Vicky. There is work going on and events coming up internationally and I’ll return to those in a future podcast, but I believe that, Judith, you’ve been doing international stuff just recently.

 

JUDITH:                   00:10:32 What a lovely segway, thank you, Derek. Yes, we, as listeners may well know, RCSLT is part of an international group called the Mutual Recognition Agreement, which is for all English-speaking professional bodies for speech and language therapists international who meet regularly. And we had the pleasure of welcoming Nicola Harris, who is the Manager of Professional Practice in Speech Pathology Australia, who visited our offices last week. We had a really fascinating half-day comparing notes, learning from each other, linking with each other. 

 

What I thought was really valuable is in some ways RCSLT is way ahead of what they’re doing in Australia and vice versa. And I think it’s because of the nature of how they deliver their therapy when they are really in the outback which is hundreds and thousands of miles away from the nearest city, whereas we’re on a very small island and we have very different challenges. But the real challenges are very much the same challenges with placements, challenges with recruitment and retention, and challenges to support delivery in a very challenging environment, especially post-pandemic. So, it was the good, the bad, and the ugly. But actually, hearing what is going on across international borders was extremely valuable and we’re going to continue to talk, so it was a really fabulous way of spending the day.        

 

HOST:                      00:11:55 Thank you, Judith and Derek. Well, that was a really interesting run through and so much work going on. You mentioned lots of things there, so I’ll put links to those in the show notes. 

 

To let people know as well that our RCSLT conference bookings are now open. That will be taking place for 1 and 2 November online, and the theme is embracing the future. So, please get booking and get some really good professional development and networking. Also, we are doing a survey on our podcasts to check that we’re meeting what you like from the podcasts in terms of length and theme and so on. So, please do take a few moments to fill that in. And our next catch up is the middle of July, so looking to seeing you then… [FADES OUT]

 

                                 MUSIC PLAYS: 00:12:36- 00:12:46

            END OF TRANSCRIPT: