RCSLT News Sept 2024: Dysphagia event; Darzi review; Covid 19 Inquiry; news from across the UK

In Septembers news:
- Dysphagia dining event www.rcslt.org/news/people-with-d…dining-experience/
- SLT voices - a new section on the website to showcase views from the world of speech and language therapy www.rcslt.org/news/rcslt-launche…lt-voices-section/
- 80th anniversary next year www.rcslt.org/about-us/the-rcslt-at-80/
- Connect England event for members: www.rcslt.org/events/rcslt-connect-england-2024/
- Voices of the future careers event www.rcslt.org/events/voices-of-t…-language-therapy/
- RCSLT student to newly qualified event www.rcslt.org/events/rcslt-stude…learning-day-2024/
- Influencing in Westminster and mentions of speech and language therapy in maiden speeches in Parliament.
- Darzi review www.rcslt.org/news/lord-darzis-n…ommunity-services/
- Evidence given at Covid 19 Inquiry www.rcslt.org/news/evidence-give…-covid-19-inquiry/
- Meeting new Welsh ministers and meetings in Northern Ireland
- Scottish budget and health cuts

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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 at the RCSLT and Cara McDonagh, Director of Engagement and Communications.

Release date:

20 September 2024

Transcript

Transcript Name: 

RCSLT_News_Sept_2024

Transcript Date: 

24 September 2024 

Speaker Key (delete/anonymise if not required): 

HOST:                         VICTORIA HARRIS

CARA:                         CARA McDONAGH

DEREK:                      DEREK MUNN 

MUSIC PLAYS: 0:00:00-0:00:34 

HOST:                         It’s Friday, 20 September, and I’m Vicky Harris, Head of Learning at the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. I’m here with colleagues, Derek Munn, Director of Policy and Public Affairs, and we’re delighted to be joined by our special guest colleague, Cara McDonagh, Director of Engagement and Communications, who was last on the podcast in April. 

We’ll be discussing what’s going on in the world of speech and language therapy and how the RCSLT is supporting that. Good morning. 

CARA:                         0:00:33 Good morning. 

DEREK:                      0:00:34 Hello. Just before we start, Vicky, I think it’s important today to note our condolences for the death of our colleague, Sarah Buckley, who was the chair of ASLTIP, the independent SLTs organisation. Sarah was a great colleague. She was great to work with, and passionate about what she did. A huge loss, and obviously, our condolences go to all who knew Sarah. 

HOST:                         0:01:00 Indeed, and thank you for that. 

Okay, so I’m going to go to Cara first, as you’re our special guest. Welcome back to the podcast. I wonder, what do you want to share with members and stakeholders today, Cara? 

CARA:                         0:01:13 Thank you. Yeah, there’s a few things I thought it would be good to update everybody on – some of the things that the Communications Team have been up to over the last few months. 

So, I was going to firstly talk about the dysphagia dining experience, which we hosted a few weeks ago in London. This was a project which was sparked by an RCSLT team member who was going back to the US for Thanksgiving, and he was reflecting on how difficult it is for people with eating, drinking, and swallowing difficulties to be able to socialise over a meal with friends and family, and was there an opportunity to establish a dysphasia café? 

Many other followers on X, including SLTs, supported this idea and thought it sounded like something that would be great to take forward. 

I did a bit of investigation, and other than a dysphasia café in Tokyo I couldn’t really find anything in existence in the UK. So, I had a chat with Wiltshire Farm Foods, who we’ve worked with before, and who produce foods for people on modified diets, to see what we could come up with. 

It was quite a long time in the planning. Logistically, it was quite challenging, but we managed to host a pop-up dining experience in a lovely restaurant in Soho a few weeks ago, and we invited people with dysphagia to enjoy a modified meal with family, friends, and carers. And we really wanted to use the opportunity to give those with eating, drinking, and swallowing difficulties a relaxing and enjoyable experience, and also just to raise awareness of dysphagia and how SLTs support people with the condition. 

It was a really great event, and we hope it will inspire others, particularly in the catering industry, to think differently about people with dysphagia. 

Also, just to note that there is a public health campaign in Northern Ireland to raise awareness of the challenges for people with eating, drinking, and swallowing issues. Hopefully this will gather momentum, and we’re looking forward to doing some more on this in this space next year. 

Secondly, I was just going to highlight SLT Voices. This is a new section on the website to showcase perspectives from speech and language therapists, as well as healthcare leaders, service users, and experts who offer valuable insights and support for the profession. 

It’s a mixture of blogs, articles, and case studies, and we’ll be building those up over a number of months, so please do check it out on our website when you get the opportunity. 

And finally, we’ve got a big birthday coming up. It is the 80th anniversary of the RCSLT – that’s happening in January 2025. Planning is well underway with a whole load of activities to celebrate this momentous birthday. We’re older than the NHS. 

We’re going to be looking at doing various different activities throughout the year. And just to note, the birthday was actually meant to be October 1944 when the first AGM was meant to happen to bring the RCSLT officially into being, but because of the Blitz, it had to be postponed to January 1945, so a little fun fact for you there. But we’ll be kicking that off, as I say, next year, so do look out on the website for some of the activities that we’ve got coming up. 

That’s all from me. 

HOST:                         0:04:18 Thank you, Kara. That sounds very exciting, and I will put a link to where people can find out more on the website. Okay, thank you. 

So, over to you, Derek, now. Obviously, a very busy time in politics, as it always seems to be! Can you give us a round-up of what’s been going on, please, and what you’re working on? 

HOST:                         0:04:36 Certainly. Last month, I spoke about the post-election round of letters to cabinet ministers, junior ministers, the contact we made to all new and returning MPs. We’re starting to get responses. Most of the ministerial responses are [form 0:04:51] letters, but one or two which are helpful to us. 

We’re also starting to see the new MPs and ministers who may be allies to us going forward popping up in debate, which is really helpful. For example, David Pinto-Duchinsky, the MP for Hendon, spoke very passionately in the House of Commons about his stammer, and spoke about speech and language therapy. His words, he said, “Speech and language therapists gave me my voice, so I can now give voice to others, and I am determined to pay that forward by fighting for world-class NHS speech therapy.” So clearly, he’s going to be someone we’re going to be working with. 

Also, a helpful reply from the Minister for Early Education, Stephen Morgan, who said in debate that continuing to build the pipeline of speech and language therapists is essential. 

Now, these are only words, but they’re words that you can hang on and use as we move into the next phase of the influencing. I would say that the debates that are instituted by backbench MPs, including some of the new ones, have got a big focus on SEND. And it’s clear that MPs are finding their initial email boxes full of parents concerned about the English special educational needs and disability system, and we can see that that’s going to require some kind of response from the government in due course. 

I also mentioned last month the Lord Darzi review of the state of the NHS in England, and the fact that the only allied health profession representative on the steering group for that was Steve Jamieson, our CEO. 

The report had a great deal that we would welcome. It talked about focus on community, it talked about the growth in need for children and young people, it talked about opportunities that the current health structures with more integration in England give. So, we’re able to welcome that. The question now is, what happens in the forthcoming 10-year plan that comes in the new year. Wes Streeting is talking about the shift from hospital to community and the shift to prevention. These things have been talked about before. The test will be, this time around, do we really get the [shift to 0:07:09] prevention, do we really get the shift from hospital to community in resource and sustained when those things – as they will – become difficult? 

The last thing just to mention is the UK Covid Inquiry, which continues, and the Royal College continues to be part of an alliance giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry about lessons that we think can be learned, particularly in the space of infection control and healthcare worker safety, looking to the future. And the alliance we’re part of actually gave oral evidence to the Covid Inquiry a couple of weeks ago. 

HOST:                         0:07:50 Wonderful. Thank you, Derek. 

Now I think we’re going to shift to what’s happening around the UK, and maybe, Cara, we can start and just ask you what’s been going on with our member events around the UK and other things for other stakeholders as well. What’s been going on? 

CARA:                         0:08:05 Yeah, so we’re very much deep into event season. This week, we held our RCSLT Connect Scotland event in Perth, where 130+ members came together to network and share knowledge and best practice. So, that was a really great event. 

Our next member event is RCSLT Connect England, which we’re hosting in Manchester on 17 October. So, if any speech and language therapists want to join us for that day, bookings are still open and we’d love to see you there. 

After that, we’ve got our RCSLT Awards, which we’re hosting on 24 October in Birmingham. And this year, we’ve done it slightly differently – we’ve got some new categories for some of the award winners, and the shortlist of all those nominees is available on our website. And we will also be celebrating our honours and fellows at the same time on that evening as well. 

And all the shortlisted entrants are a mixture of not only speech and language therapists, but also those who have contributed to the speech and language therapy profession or raised awareness, so it’s really nice to be able to celebrate with lots of our stakeholders and partners and service users. 

Then following that, in November, 13 November, we’ve got a webinar which is around starting a career in speech and language therapy. This is really to understand what the profession can offer and how to become a speech and language therapist. And it’s open to anybody interested in the profession, or anybody who provides career advice, so career leaders, teachers, parents, carers, or anyone looking for a career change and is interested in speech and language therapy. Please do sign up to that if you’re interested in looking at a career in the profession. 

And then our final event of the year is our webinar for students to SQPs, and this is to support students in their penultimate or final year of study and to support them with their transition to becoming newly qualified practitioners. We’ll be giving advice and tips on interviews and job seeking, and that’s on 5 December, and it’s online, so if you are a student studying to be a speech and language therapist, please do sign up to that because there’ll be lots of there’ll be lots of advice and support there. 

That’s our events for the rest of the year. 

HOST:                         0:10:29 Thank you, Cara. Obviously, it sounds like you’re very busy right now. I will put the links to any events that people can sign up for on the show notes for this podcast. Thank you. 

Now over to you, Derek – what’s happening around the UK? 

DEREK:                      0:10:42 Thank you. [Inaudible 0:10:44] in one minute. Welsh government changes continue, so we’ve had another change of health secretary in Wales. But we are busy meeting the new ministers in Wales one by one. Some familiar faces there, to try and push on with the agendas we already had in Wales around workforce, around youth justice, other areas. We also had meetings with ministers in Northern Ireland. 

In Scotland, the challenge politically in the month was the Scottish budget, which has seen quite significant cuts, including to the NHS budget, and particularly to mental health services. So, that puts us into a kind of defensive mode in Scotland, where we’re trying to make the case to maintain levels of speech and language therapy funding, and the Scotland team are working hard on that. 

I want to just briefly in finish here to mention something done by our Outcomes Team with the ROOT tool. They have extracted a bunch of data about the impact of speech and language therapy, which is really helpful to people like me who are trying to make the case for the profession. And the headline figure, which I hope will make us all feel good, is that 79% of children who receive speech and language therapy see a beneficial outcome from it. And that top line number certainly gave me a lot of encouragement as I go forward with my work for the profession. 

HOST:                         0:12:10 Thank you, Derek, that’s a lovely thing to end on. And thank you, Cara. 

Before we leave then, I just want to give a notice of some podcasts that are coming up. Look out for a podcast from our International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders series next week in which we chat with a researcher and a parent from the Netherlands about how speech and language therapists and parents can collaborate to support children with development and language disorder or DLD. 

And our next news piece is on 18 October. 

Thank you, and see you then. 

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