In December's news:
- Roll call of the sucesses of 2023, in spite of the severe challenges
- Key issues for the speech and language therapy profession around the UK at the moment
- What to expect in 2024
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.
In December's news:
- Roll call of the sucesses of 2023, in spite of the severe challenges
- Key issues for the speech and language therapy profession around the UK at the moment
- What to expect in 2024
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.
Speaker Key (delete/anonymise if not required):
HOST: VICTORIA HARRIS
DEREK: DEREK MUNN
MUSIC PLAYS: 0:00:00-0:00:07
HOST: 0:00:07 Welcome to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists news catch-up. It’s Thursday, 21 December. I’m Vicky Harris, Head of Learning at the RCSLT, and I’m here with my colleague, Derek Munn, RCSLT’s Director of Policy and Public Affairs for our last news catch-up of 2023. Good morning, Derek.
DEREK: 0:00:25 Good morning, Vicky.
HOST: 0:00:26 It’s nearly the end of 2023. What do you feel are the achievements for the speech and language therapy profession this year, please?
DEREK: 0:00:35 The achievements for the profession. I suppose I would say that the professional has continued to do the brilliant work that it does, but there’s a temptation to say that the key achievement is surviving in the face of unprecedented vacancies, unprecedented challenges to morale. We do not forget at the Royal College each and every day the challenging situation in which many speech and language therapists are currently working, and it continues to guide everything that we do.
So, I’m going to, if I may, go over some greatest hits of the year, almost, of areas where we have managed to make a difference as a profession and on behalf of the profession, but never forgetting that big picture context that we get the challenge that the speech language therapy profession continues to face.
I’ll start in Scotland. We were pleased to be able to head off a proposal in the City of Edinburgh to withdraw all funding on the local government side to speech and language therapy. Ran a successful campaign to get that cut overturned. We were pleased to see reports from Public Health Scotland, recognising children’s language and new lead posts appointed.
We had a good year for profile in Wales with ministerial visits with attendance at a number of parliamentary committees; a lot of profile around youth justice, although there’s still work to be done.
Northern Ireland, where we’re operating in a context that there’s still no government, but we’ve managed to position ourselves ahead of future budgets coming back and, in particular, in respect of the mental health workforce.
UK level – England/UK, mostly England only what I’m going to say now: the apprenticeships are starting to roll out and I think that’s been a big success for the profession this year. And we were able to get an enhanced £26,000 funding band which we were pleased by. Bunch of stuff working with the Department of Education. We were pleased, as I mentioned last month, with the new neurodiversity in schools programme, the work we’re doing around SEND reform, and also that we were able to head off what we thought was a potentially damaging change to the requirement around the early years workforce.
On the adult side, we wish we didn’t have to, but we were pleased that we were able to get incorrect guidance on autism corrected so that the profession was rightly represented, that we were able to get clarity on conflicting guidance around stroke, that we were able to be referenced in NICE’s depression guideline, and written into the Justice Healthcare Standards.
And if I might say on the co-production side, I was particularly pleased that the coproduced vision for a DLD friendly society was finally brought out.
HOST: 0:03:35 Thank you, Derek. That’s quite a list. Lots to celebrate there. I wonder what’s happening now, particularly, around the UK that will be of interest to our listeners, please.
DEREK: 0:03:47 Just a few things, Vicky. Starting with the bad news: waiting lists are up again, on children and adults’ side this month. There’d been a slight dip on the adult side for community health and also for autism diagnosis. So, there were loads and loads of stats, but I’m afraid very few of them are good ones.
In better news, the Centre for Social Justice has [named checked 0:04:11] us in reference to our evidence in their new report on poverty. We’re pleased about that because we wanted for a while to begin to raise the profile of the links between poverty and speech, language and communication.
We’ve had a good month in parliament [inaudible 0:04:28] parliament in questions and debates. Glenn Carter, the head of Scotland office actually mentioned by name in the Scottish Parliament debate, so that was good. And on the news, where I was interviewed on Radio 5 around waiting lists and times for children, and we were also on ITV Wales with a very innovative project around dysphasia.
In Northern Ireland, we held a very successful early years round table to begin a coalition, and that links to reports in Northern Ireland about the urgent and need for action to be taken on early years there.
HOST: 0:05:03 Thank you. Finally, looking ahead to 2024 next year, what are the priorities for our members and those with speech, language and communication needs, please?
DEREK: 0:05:14 For someone in my line of work, 2024 is all about the General Election. When will it be? What will be the issues? What will be the outcome of it? Clearly, there’s the election and all the political decree that goes with that. But there’s what follows; if there is change of government, what does that mean? I know a lot of people have hopes that they would like to see a change of government.
We also need to be aware, though, that there are good things going on right now, like aspects of the SEND reform programme, that we wouldn’t want to see the baby thrown out with the bathwater. Working ahead with… for example, the Labour Party have a commitment on children’s early language, and we are working to make sure that that’s properly nuanced and deliverable.
So, the UK General Election is the heart of next year in the political world. There may or may not be a return to government in Northern Ireland as well, and that may or may not involve other elections there too. So, that’s part of the politics of everything.
The context will continue to be workforce and vacancy challenges and issues around recruitment and retention, and that will be a huge part of what we do as the Royal College, as well as the situation that continues to face speech and language therapists on the ground.
Part of that, and this is something that the Board of Trustees have been discussing recently, is bridging the national and the local, and making sure that we are finding ways to give members on the ground the resources they need and the support they need to win those local influencing battles alongside what we do at national level, and we’ll be looking to up our game on that in the course of 2024.
HOST: 0:07:00 Thank you, Derek, for that round up. So, that’s it for 2023. Looking ahead to 2024, there are a couple of podcasts coming in January. The first one will be on thickened fluids and that will be early in the new year. And then also look out for our next news podcast on 25 January.
Finally, we value your opinions as listeners, so please do fill in our very short survey about the podcasts to let us know what we can do better and to share your ideas for future shows. I’ll put a link in the show notes.
Thank you very much for listening.
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