October 2024
What is your current role?
I am children's community speech and language therapist. Currently I work across both the early years team, supporting children under 5, and the schools team, supporting children in schools in Lambeth and Southwark. This is my first job as a speech and language therapist (SLT). I joined Evelina London in September 2023.
Tell us about a typical day
Since I work across 2 teams (lots of community SLTs work across multiple teams) I have 2 different types of typical day.
On an early years team day, I will work out of a community clinic. Currently I am based at Gracefield Gardens Health Centre. My day is usually made up of one-to-one appointments with children and their parents or carers. However, we also run group sessions for children so I am sometimes running one of these with another SLT or SLT assistant. I could also be running online workshops with parents or going to drop-in sessions at the local children's centre. At our drop-ins families attend their local children’'s centre for a stay and play, and I am on hand if any parents or carers are concerned or have any questions.
On a school team day, I go into a school in Lambeth or Southwark. I usually have a plan of the children I need to see and the staff I want to meet with, but I've learnt this can often change so my day needs to be a bit flexible! I'll stay in that same school working with the children and staff from 9am until about 2.30pm. Afterwards, I tend to head back to one of the community bases to finish up my admin and plan for the next visit. This is also a good chance to have a catch up about the day with my fellow SLT colleagues.
In both early years and schools I see children to assess their communication and set goals based on their individual strengths and needs. I try to include parents and carers in setting these goals as their input is really important. Goals might support social communication (such as asking for things), understanding spoken language or using spoken language depending on the child's need and what will have the best impact. In early years I work with parents to show them strategies or activities they can do to help us meet these goals. In schools I work closely with the support staff and teachers, who will then carry out any recommended strategies or activities with the child. We continuously review these goals and set new ones once they've been achieved and then repeat this process again!
What's the best thing about your job?
Working with such a big team of SLTs! Over 100 SLTs and SLT assistants make up Evelina London's community SLT team. It means that someone will almost always have an answer to questions or be happy to help. As a fairly new SLT it is really helpful to work in a team with such a broad range of experiences.
What is your proudest moment?
I think completing my first whole year as a qualified SLT. I started in this job, my first 'proper job' after university, in September 2023 so I have just hit this one-year milestone! I've learnt a lot in this past year, and I'm really proud of the growth I've made.
What are you working on at the moment?
I'm writing this blog just after the new school year has started, so it's a busy time of year. At the moment I'm working with my school's special educational needs coordinators to set up what we want speech and language therapy to look like for the year and get to know any of children who might be new to me.
I'm also working towards signing off my 'newly qualified' competencies. These are goals set by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, and relate to 5 key areas of the role: communication, partnerships, leadership and lifelong learning, research and evidence-based practice and professional autonomy and accountability. To pass each area I need to show that I have completed the goals. Once I've done these I can start thinking about the next step in my career and putting myself forward for more experienced roles over the next year.
What would you say to someone thinking of becoming a speech and language therapist?
I shadowed some SLTs before I started my degree, which helped me get an idea of what the role would involve. If you're able to get any experience like this I'd say go for it as it was really helpful.
My other piece of advice would be to go into it with an open mind. As SLTs we work with both children and adults. I think lots of people come into the SLT degree set on working with a particular care group, and change their mind by the time they've qualified so it's good to learn about both!
Thank you to the children and young people who have so brilliantly illustrated our blog pages.