In August's news:
- Members - how to help us know more about the profession by completing your member profiles. (Login to your RCSLT 'My account' and click on 'Your profile' to access this.)
- Takeaways from RCSLT visit to IALP 32nd world congress: ialpauckland2023.org/
- RCSLT outcomes work and ROOT tool www.rcslt.org/speech-and-languag…tcome-measurement/
- RCSLT events and webinars www.rcslt.org/events/
- RCSLT conference bookings: www.rcslt.org/events/rcslt-conference-2023/
- 2nd vacancy survey www.rcslt.org/news/second-vacanc…t-survey-now-open/
- HCPC standards of proficiency www.hcpc-uk.org/standards/standar…s-of-proficiency/
Please do feedback on our podcasts to help us improve them: tinyurl.com/RCSLTPodcastFeedback. Thank you!
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 Communication.
In August's news:
- Members - how to help us know more about the profession by completing your member profiles. (Login to your RCSLT 'My account' and click on 'Your profile' to access this.)
- Takeaways from RCSLT visit to IALP 32nd world congress: ialpauckland2023.org/
- RCSLT outcomes work and ROOT tool www.rcslt.org/speech-and-languag…tcome-measurement/
- RCSLT events and webinars www.rcslt.org/events/
- RCSLT conference bookings: www.rcslt.org/events/rcslt-conference-2023/
- 2nd vacancy survey www.rcslt.org/news/second-vacanc…t-survey-now-open/
- HCPC standards of proficiency www.hcpc-uk.org/standards/standar…s-of-proficiency/
Please do feedback on our podcasts to help us improve them: tinyurl.com/RCSLTPodcastFeedback. Thank you!
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 Communication.
HOST: VICTORIA HARRIS
CARA: CARA McDONAGH
DEREK: DEREK MUNN
MUSIC PLAYS: 0:00:00-0:00:04
HOST: 0:00:06 It’s Thursday, 31 August. I’m Vicky Harris, and I’m here with Derek Munn, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapist’s Director of Policy and Public Affairs. We’re delighted to be joined by special guest, Cara McDonagh, RCSLT’s Director of Engagement and Communications, who’s going to bring us up to speed with some key things happening in her world right now.
Good morning.
CARA: 0:00:26 Good morning.
DEREK: 0:00:28 Hello.
HOST: 0:00:31 Cara, to start with you. The last time you guest starred in this podcast you were launching the Horizon member profile project. I wonder if you can reminder listeners what that is, please, and tell us a bit more about how it’s going?
CARA: 0:00:43 Sure. So, the Horizon member profile project launched earlier in the year, and it’s a project to try and capture some more information about members, where they work, where they are in their career.
We’re had over 4,000 members complete their profile online so far, and we’re currently in the process of reviewing some of that data so that we can better understand the members and help the information to inform some of our work and to target some of our services and the products that we produce for members.
But we do need more members to complete that profile. We’ve got over 20,000, so we do need more information. If you haven’t done this already, it would be great if you could just log onto the website, go to the member homepage and just take a few minutes just to complete some of that information.
Also, really important to make sure that your contact details are up-to-date. That means that we can make sure that we’re contacting you, we’ve got the right email address, and you’re getting bulletins sent to the right address if you get a hard copy sent to you every quarter. So yeah, do check that out.
HOST: 0:01:48 That’s great, thank you. So, I will put a little link in the show notes to help people to navigate to that, if they haven’t done so already. Thank you, Cara.
Derek, if I might turn to you now. You’re just back from a trip to New Zealand attending a global meeting for the profession. I wonder if you have any reflections for the listeners about that experience, please?
DEREK: 0:02:09 Thanks, Vicky. The first thing to say is it was a great honour to attend the International Association meeting, the global body that we’re part of, and to represent the UK profession. There were a number of UK members there.
The international work we do, both the time we spend and the budget we spend on it is pretty small in the context of the Royal College overall, but it is important and it’s worth doing. And I have a number of reflections. The first thing from both New Zealand and Australia was I think around multicultural awareness. They’re in a different place because they have a history of the country itself being colonised, whereas our own history is of being the colonisers.
But the way in which New Zealand, for example, is embracing its by bicultural heritage, pushing forward the Māori language, and thinking then about what that means for speech and language therapy practice. I drew a lot of lessons from our own work on anti-racism, on multilingualism, on cultural understanding which I will bring back.
The second thing which was important to me was to hear what we, the profession globally, is doing around work with the World Health Organisation, and the promotion of communication and swallowing need in those environments. We’re involved in work with the WHO around hearing, but we’re particularly involved around rehab, and very well positioned thanks to the work of Pam Enderby and Maron Brady, and other people from the UK who are involved at world level in this stuff. So, being clear that about what progress is being made, how we can further support it, that was important.
We presented our work on our outcome measures, and it’s clear that what we have with the RCSLT’s outcome measures tool and that programme is globally significant. That no other country has got it, that the size of the dataset, that the things we can now pull out from the roots are really, really useful and world-beating.
Some members will be aware of the mutual recognition agreement. This is the means by which ourselves and America and Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland essentially recognise each other’s qualifications as substantially equivalent. And I was involved in the face-to-face negotiations to update that.
We had to mention, for example, the fact that we’re now going to do swallowing competencies pre-registration. People were very keen to hear about the apprenticeship route and what that might mean for substantial equivalent.
There were also conversations about widening the circle to other countries in terms of mutual recognition of qualifications, and that would move us beyond countries where English is the only or primary language. So, fascinating conversations to be involved in.
And the last thing I would mention is around vacancies. I’ll talk around the ongoing challenge of vacancies in UK, I’m sure later in the podcast. But Australia and New Zealand both have huge vacancy problems, and they are casting eyes towards us, just as we’re casting eyes towards them in terms of filling some of those vacancies.
So, I think those are some of the things that I brought back.
HOST: 0:05:42 Wonderful, thanks. Coming back to you then, Cara. I know that there’s loads going on in terms of your team right now, and particularly some opportunities for members. I wonder if you can talk us through some of the big ticket items, please.
CARA: 0:05:54 Sure. I was going to start with the website, and then talk about some of the events that are coming up over the autumn. In response to the member feedback, we’ve made quite a lot of changes to the website. Last week, we launched new navigation to make it a bit easier to find some of the key pages across the site. There’s also a new footer at the bottom with quick links to core pages, to be able to make it a bit easier to access things speedily.
We’ve done quite a lot of work on the search function, and we’ll be making some more changes to the search feature over the coming months as well. But again, hopefully making a bit more responsive and a bit easier to use.
And earlier in the year, we also introduced a new feature to enable members to download guidance in PDF format, making it a lot easier to print and to share with colleagues as well – just sort of a quick reference. That was another feature that some members asked us about. I think just, as we move online, sometimes you do need it in a different format as well to be able to use it in different ways.
We’ve got lots of other improvements coming over the next few months. There will be small, incremental changes, but hopefully, they will make a big difference to your experiences when you’re trying to access information on the website. Some of those include making the site more accessible, more mobile-friendly. And also making changes to the content itself, because it’s very well having the functionality there, but we also need to make sure that the information is presented clearly, concisely, all the links are there and it’s just easy and quick to scan and find what you need when you need it.
So, do keep checking back on the website and do give us feedback as well on other things that you might want to see happening on the site.
And then the second thing is we’ve got lots of events. It’s very much back to school time, I think. Lots of events coming up this autumn. We’re kicking off on 28 September with a webinar that we’re doing jointly with NHS England on preceptorships. That’s on 28September at 12pm, so lunchtime slot.
We’ve got conference, that’s our big event, so it’s on 1 and 2 November. We’ve got a really packed programme with a wide variety of settings, and the agenda is now available online, so you can check that out. There are early bird tickets available, and the early bird price will be available until 30 September. There’s also special rates as well for students and retired members and if you’re doing group bookings, so do book early. We’ve got over 700 members have booked on so far to conference, so that should be a really good event and lots of opportunities to also network with other members online as well.
We’re really pleased to be hosting the annual Stephen Hawking lecture in partnership with the Motor Neurone Disease Association. This is second year that we’ve been doing this. The theme for this year is advanced care planning, and the speaker is Professor Bee Wee. She was former National Clinical Director for Palliative and End of Life Care, NHS England. So, that should be a really good session. That’s on 21 November online and that’s 6pm, so that’s an evening webinar.
Then we’ve got the student event. Again, we do this every year. So, the student event is, again, an online event and it’s there to support students with a life after graduation, so giving them advice on job applications, interviews, getting to grips with what’s expected as they transition to newly qualified practitioners. That’s a really good session for any students out there.
All the events are bookable on the website, with more information about the sessions and what’s happening, so do check those out. And don’t forget that all these events you can use towards your CPD hours as well, so good opportunity to increase your learning as well. Check out the website for more information.
HOST: 0:09:54 Wonderful, thanks. A lot that’s going on and I second the point about CPD. These are great CPD opportunities to boost your CPD record and your learning.
Going to go back to Derek again now and bring you back to the UK now. Are there any other things that listeners should know about, please?
DEREK: 0:10:16 Thank you. Yes, it’s summertime, so some activity has been a wee bit quieter. But just to mention a few things. Thank you again to everyone who took part in the vacancy survey we did earlier in the year. But thank you even more to the over 250 services who, during the summer, have taken part in the second one.
Cara and I were discussing this earlier, because there was inevitably going to be some drop off, but actually, I’m really pleased that 200… I’m pleased in the sense that 250 services have taken the time in the summer to share their experience with us of vacancy challenges.
Obviously, my worry is that this is still a massive issue out there. This is still a matter of major concern that we need to keep a focus upon.
A couple of things that came out from Westminster just before they broke from the summer. Robin Walker, the Chair of the Education Select Committee in giving an update report on early years specifically referenced the importance of access to speech and language therapy, which we know from meetings we’ve had with him [inaudible 0:11:29] about autism actually were extensively quoted, talking as a priority for them about access to speech and language therapy workforce, which we also thought was helpful.
On the subject of autism, some members in England will be aware by now that there is new guidance on an all-age autism assessment pathway, which contains what we’re regarding is an error. There’s a table in the appendix which lists which professionals do what and it misses out SLT, and occupational therapy too, from a table where we have always done stuff. And this this guidance is causing real [inaudible 0:12:10]. We are hoping that it’s an administrative error and not a misunderstanding on the part of the people who produced the revise documentation. But if this is affecting you, be assured we are moving heaven and earth to get that table corrected, and get SLT and OT back where they should be in the list of appropriate professions in the autism assessment pathways.
Other work that our colleague Judith is doing [inaudible 0:12:34] professional development [need 0:12:36] is around the positioning of SLT in urgent and emergency care, and that’s important.
And then the last thing I would say is that the Scottish public inquiry into the pandemic is restarting. It restarted this week. And it’s gone a bit quiet; it’s had all sorts of different difficulties. We’ll be back on it now that Scottish inquiry is back.
In terms of the UK public inquiry one of the points that we want to make is around the effects of the pandemic on children and children’s language. And we noted that the Children’s Commissioner for England issued quite a strongly worded statement this week, saying that she was concerned that the public inquiry wasn’t [taking into children 0:13:21] with sufficient seriousness. So, we’ll be using that too as ammunition.
I think those were the wee things that I just wanted to mention this month.
HOST: 0:13:31 Thank you, Derek, that’s quite a comprehensive summary there. Okay, well, thank you both. Where there are links, I will put those in the podcast notes to direct people to the right places.
But before I go, I’d just like to remind listeners that the regulatory body for speech language therapists, the HCPC, have updated standards of proficiency which come into effect on 1 September. As we record, that is tomorrow. And also, that our next news catch up is on 15 September. It’s now back to school, so we’re going back to our usual schedule of doing these podcasts in the middle of the month, so the next one will be mid-September. See you then.
MUSIC PLAYS: 0:14:15
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