RCSLT news Dec 2024: review of 2024; campaigns and how to get involved; news from around the UK

The December news podcast for the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists featuring Derek Munn, Director of Policy and Public Affairs. Dated 16 December 2024.

• Derek reflects back on 2024, looking at some of the big changes.
• Campaigns and how to get involved. Including Mikey Ackers' petition to Parliament which will be debated in the House of Commons on 27 January.
• What's happening around the nations of the UK.

Useful links:
Inclusive Communication in Parliament coalition:
https://www.rcslt.org/news/rcslt-joins-inclusive-parliament-coalition/

Campaign on Primary Progressive Aphasia:
https://www.rcslt.org/news/campaign-to-improve-care-for-people-living-with-primary-progressive-aphasia-ppa-launched/

Mikey's Wish petition
https://www.rcslt.org/news/rcslt-thanks-signatories-of-mikey-akers-invest-in-slt-petition/

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. It was produced and edited by freelance producer, Jacques Strauss.

Release date:

16 December 2024

Please be aware that the views expressed are those of the guests and not the RCSLT.

Please do take a few moments to respond to our podcast survey: uk.surveymonkey.com/r/LG5HC3R

Transcript

Transcript Name: 

rcslt-december-news-review-of-2024-campaigns-and-how-to-get-involved-news-from-around-the-uk

Transcript Date: 

17 December 2024 

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 December news podcast for the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists – the RCSLT. I’m Vicky, and I’m here with Derek Munn, Director of Policy and Public Affairs at the RCSLT, to talk through the things you need to know about in the world of speech and language therapy at the moment. 

Good morning, Derek. 

DEREK:                      0:00:23 Hello, Vicky. 

HOST:                         0:00:27 As this is the last podcast of the year, it feels only right that we look back a bit and get a bit reflective. I wonder, what do you feel are the big changes or even steps forwards this year, please? 

DEREK:                      0:00:36 I suppose, for anyone working in politics, the centre of the year was the UK General Election, there was before and after that, although a surprising amount of continuity in some ways. And we spent a lot of time preparing for the election; we’ve spent a lot of time since reaching out to new ministers and MPs. But there are a number of areas where there’s a change in tone, there’s a change in approach, no doubt about that. 

Other areas where there’s a continuity, not least because there still isn’t a lot of resource available, so we’re still in the process of positioning around that. 

Should be able to announce early in the new year a new chair of our all-party parliamentary group, an MP with stammer who benefited from speech and language therapy who’s very keen to make a contribution.

What else would I say about 2024? Alot of traction with the UK Government and NHS England around children and young people. And that’s important, because that’s something that wouldn’t historically always have been true, but we’ve seen a real upping in the level of engagement that we get from Department of Health and NHS England around children and young people and active strands of work, which are good. 

And a strong focus this year on oracy, which we welcome, but try to make sure that different forms of verbal communication are properly recognised within oracy policy. 

Vacancies has been a big feature of the year. The vacancy surveys that we’ve done have continued to get a lot of traction, but that’s sadly because it remains a very live and hot issue. 

Some things that people might not know necessarily in their area – we finally got some movement on SNAP, which is the… it’s the kind of data set of metrics around stroke, and it’s long been a challenge for the way that it doesn’t measure speech and language therapy outcome effectively. So, we’ve got a wee bit of movement on that, which has been on for a long time. 

Again, particularly in England, some strong action on developing new roles in prisons, which was good to see. 

I think I’d also mention an upping in the profile we’ve had in the Scottish Parliament this year, not least because of the success of the first VoiceBox, the children’s joke competition that we run. And we had the first one of those in Scottish Parliament this year and we’ve seen a pick-up in Scottish parliamentary engagement partly to do with that. 

HOST:                         0:02:53 There has been a lot going on this year. And what I will do is go through your comments and see if we’ve got any documents on our website relating to those and put those in the show notes for people if they’re interested. 

What campaigns is your team involved in at the moment, and can others get involved as well? 

DEREK:                     I'll run through, and in many cases, yes, we’d actively welcome the support of members and people with lived experience of speech and language therapy. Regular listeners will remember that there was a petition before Parliament about investment in SLT, which had been raised by Mikey Akers – he’s a big service user activist and advocate. The petitions committee in the new parliament have revisited that because it’s been put on hold with the election. And there will be a debate in the House of Commons on 27 January on investment in speech and language therapy. So, we will be spending a lot of January building up to that, and part of that will be asking people to contact their MPs and asking them to take part in the debate, or at least be supportive. 

There’s still an e-action out there around primary progressive aphasia and the need for a nationally funded specialist provision for PPA in England, and we’re encouraging people to support that. 

The House of Commons is going through a modernisation process, and that affects all sorts of things, because the House of Commons is a place sorely in need of modernisation, there is no doubt. But we wrote them with a group of organisations – STAMMA and others – around the need to recognise different forms of communication in the proceedings of the House of Commons, whether that’s MPs themselves or people interacting with committees and so on. And we were pleased to suddenly get a response from the clerk to the committee saying, please come in and talk to us about this. They’re taking it very seriously, and it looks like we’ve got some movement there, which is great. 

I should say, actually, similar thing happened with the statement we put out with a range of charity partners around the UK Government’s child poverty strategy. And no sooner had we done it that we got a call from the Cabinet Office saying can you come and talk to us about this – the interaction between speech and communication and child poverty, so that was a win as well. 

You’ll have heard on previous podcasts about the response to the NHS England 10-year plan. The collective organisation responses have now gone in, but individual clinicians and members of the public are still invited to respond to the 10-year plan consultation until the start of February, so we would encourage people to do that. 

Just so the listeners are completely up-to-date with things going on at the end of the year, you’ll have seen Keir Starmer talking about his new milestones. Now, I’m a political hack and I can’t remember what’s a milestone and what’s a mission and what’s a message, but I think it was milestones couple of weeks ago. One of them, you may have seen. One of the metrics by which he wants the Labour government to be measured by 2029 is around school readiness. And we all know the challenges relating to speech, language and communication when it comes to school readiness, so we’re going to be heavily engaged in that debate. 

We’ve also recently put in a submission to the Curriculum and Assessment Review, and coming in to the Westminster Parliament when we get back after Christmas and the New Year, we’ll be moving into the committee stage – the line-by-line amendment of the mental health reform legislation. 

HOST:                         0:06:19 Wonderful. Thank you. We should all make a note of 27 January to look out for that event in the House of Commons. That’s very exciting. 

I wonder, now, if you could take us on a tour of things happening around the UK, please? 

DEREK:                      0:06:30 Northern Ireland government has been back in power for the best part of the year now. There has been a recognition of the challenges around children’s language and communication in particular. And the Northern Ireland Department for Education has actually given us a grant to do some work around spreading best practice. So, we’re calling the project ‘Language Launch Pad’, and it’s quite an intensive project that we’re running until the end of March about things that we know work well in parts of Northern Ireland, trying to support them working well elsewhere in Northern Ireland. 

And Wales I pick out particularly, I very rarely name individual colleagues, but someone in our Wales team, Naila Noori, our Policy Officer, has a strong background in equalities. And the one of the Welsh Government ministers specifically asked for Naila to support her with the Wales women’s health policy. And as you can imagine, [inaudible 0:07:22] will ensure there is appropriate recognition of speech and language therapy within it. So, that was a really nice thing to happen in Wales at the end of the year. 

HOST:                         0:07:28 That’s it, really, for this month and this year. As we go, I just want to put out a notice about a couple of AI podcasts that we’ve released recently, and you can see them wherever you get your podcast from. These will be part of a series of podcasts we’re doing on AI. So, please do have a listen to the first two which are out, and look out for the others coming soon. 

And our next news piece is in the New Year, on 24 January. Look forward to seeing you in 2025. Thank you.

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