Transcript Name:
RCSLT_News_May_2024
Transcript Date:
24 May 2024
Speaker Key (delete/anonymise if not required):
HOST: VICTORIA HARRIS
GLENN: GLENN CARTER
DEREK: DEREK MUNN
MUSIC PLAYS: 0:00:00-0:00:13
HOST: 0:00:13 Hello, welcome to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists news podcast for May 2024. It’s Tuesday, 21 May. I’m Vicky Harris, Head of Learning at the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. I’m here with my wonderful colleagues, Derek Munn, Director of Policy and Public Affairs, and special guest, Glenn Carter, Head of the RCSLT Scotland Office.
We’re going to take a look at what’s been going on in the world of speech and language therapy, and we’ve got a special focus on Scotland today.
Good morning.
GLEN: 0:00:39 Morning
DEREK: 0:00:41 Hello.
HOST: 0:00:42 I’m going to start with you, Glen, good morning. It’s lovely to have you back on the podcast. I wonder if we can start with a bit of a light-hearted approach, please. I wonder if you can tell listeners about the VoiceBox competition, please.
GLEN: 0:00:54 Thanks, Vicky. Great to be here. VoiceBox is a national [dual 0:00:58] competition for primary school age children. It’s designed to raise awareness of the importance and joy of communication.
RCSLT have done it before in Wales, Northern Ireland, and England before; we’ve never done it in Scotland. We’ve started planning this probably since I joined RCSLT a couple of years ago. The final’s on 6 June in the Scottish Parliament. It’s been a lot of work, but it’s a real joy to engage with kids across Scotland and hear their jokes.
So, we’ve had loads of entries from across Scotland. We’ve had 26 out of the 32 local authorities enter a joke, and we had to narrow down those… the finalists down to 28, who are coming from as far and wide as Shetland and Orkney. So, it’s great.
We’ve got the Presiding Officer hosting the event, which is quite a big deal, and we got [Zara Janjua 0:01:45], who’s a comedian and journalist, compèring it. I actually met her when she was interviewing me on BBC Scotland, and I think she’ll be a brilliant compère.
We’ve also got the Children’s Commissioner, Nicola Killean, is a judge, as is the presiding officer, and a rep from Collins publisher and myself.
So, we’ve done this [without 0:02:06] the help of our VoiceBox ambassadors, who are our members across Scotland – they’ve been really helping drive it from a local level. And really looking forward to the final. We’ve invited the First Minister. We invited the Deputy First Minister, people from the Cabinet, and MSPs. So, it’s fast approaching.
HOST: 0:02:24 Brilliant, thank you. Look forward to that, and we’ll be sharing information about that as it happens, I’m sure.
Okay, so last time you were on the podcast, you talked about a situation in Edinburgh, and now it’s 12 months later and I understand there’s another significant challenge on the table. Can you talk us through this, please?
GLENN: 0:02:42 Yeah, 12 months ago there was a situation in Scotland where a Council were proposing 100% cut to speech language therapy and we managed to successfully lobby and reverse that decision.
This year, there was a similar situation that arose in the north of Scotland, where they were proposing another 100% cut. Now, RCSLT don’t always step in in these situations, but having assessed the risk to the children and young people in the area and our members, we felt that it was important to intervene.
So, it all happened very quickly. We were only given a week’s notice because… well, we found out on the Thursday before the full Council meeting, which was the following Thursday. So, I was actually on annual leave that week and I came back on the Monday.
Quite quickly, we wrote all the counsellors in the area, and that got picked up by the media. And I wrote to the Council asking for a deputation, which basically means asking to give a speech at the full Council meeting. So, that was Monday. On the Tuesday, I was interviewed by STV, which is the equivalent of ITV, and on the Wednesday I was travelling up to Aberdeen by train.
By this stage, there was lots of interest from parents, from counsellors, from the media. We were on television that night, and that evening I was writing the deputation.
On the Thursday, there was a full Council meeting. I thought it was important to be in the room. I got to chat to lots of key people from the Council, including the officers, which was helpful. However, on the day, I wasn’t permitted to speak during the meeting. They felt it was unfair that one group would be represented and not others, given that there was other cuts on the table. And the long and short of it was the cuts were voted through. So, very difficult situation in that particular Council. I felt it was important to raise the profile of why this was potentially going to be bad for children and young people, and make the case as to why having speech and language therapists working in education is an important thing.
HOST: 0:04:58 Thank you. Interesting. And how did you engage with the Council officials during that time? Did you come up with any sustainable solutions to the problem?
GLENN: 0:05:07 My preference is always to build relationships and to discuss it reasonably behind closed doors. We didn’t get a lot of time, however, in this instance, so there wasn’t enough time to do that. However, I have had some very constructive discussions with key people in that local area.
And your question about sustainability is really important, because we don’t want to have to do this or get involved every time – we well if we have to, but we’ve got a good plan.
So, we’re working… [I’ve 0:05:37] brought together a speech and language therapy round table, which includes the local authorities, the Association Directors of Education, COSLA, the speech and language therapy children and young people’s leads. And we’ve got two key objectives, and that’s… one is to identify the principles for transformation for children’s services in Scotland, and the second is to identify principles for a partnership funding agreement that is sustainable.
We’re making really good progress with that. We’re building consensus and we’re hoping to meet with the Cabinet Secretary for Education in September to present where we’ve got to. So, I think there’s hope in that, and it feels a good way forward by doing it together with lots of key partners.
HOST: 0:06:20 That sounds amazing. Thank you. And is there any other important news that you want to share today?
GLENN: 0:06:27 Well, there’s lots going on in Scotland. I’ve given evidence at the Additional Support for Learning Inquiry, and that’s in the education committee in Parliament. They’ve since published their report, which has a number of key findings around speech and language therapy, so that is really good to see. They definitely took interest in what we said, and we had lots of relevant questions when I was there.
Derek and I also gave written evidence for the COVID-19 Inquiry in Scotland. We’re just finalising our statement of moment, and there’s a possibility that I’ll get called to give spoken evidence over the summer.
We’re also publishing a report linking human rights and communication needs; we’re hoping to have that in the autumn, which will be really helpful because, in the context in Scotland, there’s lots of policy around human rights and I think it will be a helpful document for our members and for the people working in the system.
We submitted a response to the Learning Disability, Autism and Neurodivergence Bill, which is now published. And finally, we’ve got a Connect event for our members on 17 September in Perth, and we’re going to be focusing on shaping the future of speech and language therapy together, and we’ll talk about whole systems change, evidence-based practice, and artificial intelligence. I think that’s it.
HOST: 0:07:51 Okay, thank you, Glenn. Now on to Derek. Derek, I wonder if we can now move around to the rest of the UK, please. Maybe start with Northern Ireland because our CEO, Steve Jamieson, has recently been there, and I wonder if you can tell listeners about why that’s so important and what’s been achieved there, please.
DEREK: 0:08:09 Thank you. [Steve makes a 0:08:10] point of being out across the UK, and he visited cancer services in Northern Ireland and also prison services. The context in Northern Ireland remains the very challenging budgetary situation there. We did, though, recently have debate in the Northern Ireland Assembly around special educational needs, which was helpful.
Wales, there’s quite a lot going on. We’re working in the background on full-time children’s speech and language posts in Welsh Government, and we hope to have some good news on that in the near future.
We’ve also had a confirmed increase in student places in Wales, which we’re very pleased about.
You’ll know that there’s a new First Minister in Wales and, to some extent, a reshuffled team. So actually, our Wales team have met with all of the new ministers, pretty much, now. And good news that all the ministers wanted to meet us, so that’s been going on.
There’s been an announcement around ALM funding. So, for those who love your acronyms, Special Educational Needs in Disability in England, SEN in Northern Ireland, ASN – Additional Support Needs – in Scotland, and ALM – Additional Learning Needs – in Wales. So, additional funding there. And also a question to the new First Minister in the Welsh Senedd chamber on speech and language therapy. A lot going on on the Welsh side.
HOST: 0:09:34 Great. Thank you. And what else is keeping you busy?
DEREK: 0:09:40 Vicky, you and I were speaking before we started recording about the date of the General Election and when that might or might not be, and obviously that now hangs over everything in terms of UK politics and government. But there is a bundle of stuff still going on around funding for speech and language therapy, waiting lists, waiting times and so on.
We’ve mentioned that Mikey Akers, the very active service user advocate for apraxia [with speech 0:10:07], has had a parliamentary petition, and it got over 10,000 signatures. Even though it hasn’t got 100,000, actually, the Parliamentary Commissions Committee have timetabled it for a debate. So, there’s going to be a debate on 1 July in the Westminster parliament on investment in speech and language therapy. So, there’s going to be a lot to do in the run-up to that parliamentary debate on speech and language therapy funding.
It links to a whole bundle of issues. We continue to be called out to do media relating to children’s waits, in particular, because parents and families continue to be unhappy about it. There’s been news about the number of local authorities in England that do education, health and care plans [in time 0:10:55], suggesting it’s as low as 5% in some areas. There’s been talk about the NHS England budgets, and suggestion that there’s a £5bn shortfall, relative to what was promised.
[Inaudible 0:11:09] what we’re calling the [inaudible 0:11:11] report after the name of the author. It’s a report that came out last week, and it’s on children’s workforce challenges in speech and language therapy. The important thing from our point of view is this is a government-commissioned report from an independent expert, which says all of the things that we have been saying about the challenges for the children’s workforce. So, we’re dealing with that whole bundle of stuff.
And then I just wanted to mention, shout-out to the neonatal SEN, who had done their own evidence to the House of Lords to an inquiry on [preterm birth 0:11:43], and it’s brilliant to see members directly putting into the parliamentary process in that way.
HOST: 0:11:47 Wonderful. Thank you. And I will put links in the show notes to all of the things that you mentioned, Derek.
Well, thank you both. I’m just going to take a moment now to mention some other podcasts that are coming up. Do look out for… there’s going to be an International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders podcast on developmental language disorder, DLD, and that’s coming very soon, and it’s on the paper ‘Teaching little kids about big sentences’.
And then we’re back in late June, so do listen out for any new podcasts on your favourite podcast app, or go to our website www.soundcloud.com/rcslt.
Thank you. Until next time, thank you very much.
MUSIC PLAYS: 0:12:31
END OF TRANSCRIPT: 0:12:46