RCSLT News February 2025: waiting lists grow; key events in Scotland; Speech and language therapy issues across the UK

The February news podcast for the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists featuring Derek Munn. Published 27 February 2025.

We look at recent concerning news about growing waiting lists in adult community speech and language therapy in England, and also see how waiting lists compare across the UK.

See statement: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGBH1T1IdnW/ 

Derek gives an update on key topics keeping his team busy right now and we have a look at closer look at things happening in Scotland.

This interview was conducted by Victoria Harris, Head of Learning at The Royal College of Speech and produced and edited by freelance producer Jacques Strauss.

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 Date: 

3 March 2025 

HOST:                         VICTORIA HARRIS 

DEREK:                      DEREK MUNN

MUSIC PLAYS: 0:00:00-0:00:06 

HOST:                         0:00:06 It’s Thursday, 27 February – nearly the end of the month, and that seems to have flown by. I’m Vicky Harris, Head of Learning at the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, and I’m here with colleague, Derek Munn, Director of Policy and Public Affairs, to catch up on what’s been happening in the world of speech and language therapy. 

Regular listeners will know that we’ve often covered waiting times around access to speech and language therapy, and many times it’s about children. But, Derek, I have heard that we’ve had some concerning news recently about adult community speech and language therapy waiting times in England. I wonder if you can tell listeners more about that, please. 

DEREK:                      0:00:44 The headline would be that the number of adults waiting for community speech and language therapy in England is 20% higher at the end of 2024 than it was at the end of 2023. Every month, we wait excitedly for the NHS England waiting times figures to go out, and then we have to extract from those the waiting time figures for community speech and language therapy. 

And you’re right that there’s tended to be a focus on the children’s figures. Of course, headlines focus on every individual month. Actually, if you take the children and young people waiting lists over, say, the last two years, the line would be pretty flat. So, up some months, down other months. Getting back to where they were in December 2022, the line is flat-ish, but remains with a huge number of… 65,000 children on the waiting list at the end of December 2024. 

But what isn’t flat is the number of adults waiting. That is going up and continuing to go up. As I said, 20%. So, nearly 24,000 adults waiting at the end of December. 

There’s also been a move in the data to add a new category at the end of people waiting more than 104 weeks. Some of the slight decrease in the one-year waits is because we’ve now got a category of two-year waits, where 450 children have been waiting over two years for a community SLT appointment, which in early childhood just makes no sense. 

Now, on the children’s side, we’re continuing to have conversation with relevant children and young people officials to say, while you are doing the right thing of seeking to tackle children’s waits in the NHS in England, you’ve got to keep thinking about the underlying causes. It won’t work to have a quick fix, increase capacity, push the kids through. It’ll just build again. You’ve got to deal with the underlying issues of demand and supply, and those conversations continue. 

HOST:                         0:02:54 Very concerning. I’ll put some links to a statement that we put out in the show notes. Are we seeing a similar picture across the UK?

DEREK:                      0:03:01 In broad terms, yes, but there are always particularities. For example, there are particular challenges, say, in Northern Ireland about waits for dysphasia assessments, and we’re seeing something similar in Scotland currently around waits for dysphasia assessments, we think. 

And in the same way as ministers at UK level have responded with plans and initiatives, the Scottish First Minister, John Swinney, announced a new waiting list plan in recent weeks, although many not only political opponents but observers said they felt it was kind of collation of existing initiatives and nothing new, although that’s something that’s been said about [some of the UK plans too 0:03:38]. 

The Welsh First Minister took a different tack and she was basically saying to health boards in Wales, we would withhold money from you if you don’t deal with waiting lists. It will be intriguing to see whether that works out. 

HOST:                         0:03:51 More broadly now, is there anything that you wanted to highlight this month that’s happening in the devolved nations? 

DEREK:                      0:03:57 I think Scotland probably. This month, I’ll focus on Scotland. We’ve talked previously about the VoiceBox competition, which is the children’s joke-telling competition that we run in schools and then run at national parliaments. And we did it in the Scottish Parliament for the first time last year and we’re doing it again this year. We’re having really strong pick-up. I think we’re up to about 15 members of the Scottish Parliament now, which is more than 1 in 10, been promoting it locally in their schools. We’ve been on Scottish television. I’ve been on Scottish radio. So, it’s looking like it’s really building some momentum towards the event that will be in the Scottish Parliament in June, which we’re delighted about. 

The Scottish Government have just published the assessment of the review of Adults with Incapacity. People who know my own background will know I was involved in Scottish Government many decades ago now! And one of the things we did was the Adults with Incapacity Act in Scotland when I was there. And that now, because it’s over 20 years old, is being reviewed. So, we are paying close attention and we are, of course, involved in the proposal to amend the Adults with Incapacity Scotland Act. It works quite different [inaudible 0:05:00] that mental capacity legislation works in other parts of the UK. 

There’s also… the build-up continues to next year’s Scottish and Welsh elections, and we are intensely engaged in putting our manifesto asks together in both Wales and Scotland. 

Scottish Labour conference took place recently, and we were at a meeting there about what’s called the Right to Rehab, which has been a UK-wide campaign but gone further in Scotland. And the Shadow Health Secretary in Scotland, the Labour Shadow, Jackie Baillie, committed to the Right to Rehab. That means that, regardless of the outcome of the Scottish Parliament election, we should be able to get the rehab agenda taken forward. 

HOST:                         0:05:40 What other things are keeping you and your team busy?

DEREK:                      0:05:42 When we recorded in January, it was just before the Westminster debate on investment in speech and language therapy, so I guess I should give you some feedback. It went very well. We had a number of our parliamentary supporters there. There were also a number of MPs who we hadn’t previously been aware that had an interest or a concern. Some people spoke from personal family experience. Other people spoke about the number of people approaching them about special educational needs and disability, about SEND, since they’ve become MPs last July

And off the back of that, Mikey Akers, the services or advocate who organised the petition, was offered a meeting with Stephen Kinnock, the Health Minister. So, we will be part of the delegation that goes to meet the Health Minister about investment in speech language therapy in March. That’s one of three ministerial meetings at the moment. 

We’ve got one coming up with Baroness Merron, who is the Minister in the House of Lords taking the mental health legislation through, and that’s in response to the strong points made by our supporters in the House of Lords during the passage of the mental health bill there. 

And then this week, I was in the Ministry of Justice meeting Nic Dakin one of the Justice Ministers, to talk about making sure that there’s equity of provision of speech and language therapy in the youth justice [estate 0:07:00], and particularly [inaudible 0:07:02] the crossover into Wales because there’s a devolution issue about matters of justice are England and Wales and [inaudible 0:07:13] Wales only, and we were encouraging the Minister to work with his Welsh counterpart to make sure that no one’s falling between the cracks. 

We’re also working with the Ministry of Justice on training issues. 

For those of you waiting on the big English reform stuff, the 10-year plan is expected later in the spring. The consultation is still open, I think, for a few more days. There has been some movement on one of Wes Streeting’s areas, which is neighbourhood health services. We’ve been hearing some slightly worrying things about the scope of neighbourhood health services potentially being very narrow. At one point, we were talking about [hearing just 0:07:48] musculoskeletal, and then we were [inaudible 0:07:50] just falls.

We’ve now established there are documents in circulation. There’s a document about how neighbourhood health services will work for children. So, I was able to take part in that session about which professions would or wouldn’t be involved in the new neighbourhood health services. And the only AHP that was in the inner ring, if you like, were dietitians at that point. We’re in the, kind of, optional [outer ring. 

But if there is to be a focus on neighbourhood health services and resource going to it, we’ve got to be saying, look, we’ve already got community provision in adult learning disability. We’ve got community provisioning in paediatrics, and we would like to have more community provision, for example, in dysphasia. And these existing good services need to come within the scope of any resource which is being put into neighbourhood health. 

HOST:                         0:08:40 Thank you, Derek. The next podcast that’s actually coming out is a research-themed one. It’s looking at a systematic review of what helps and what’s a barrier to communication partner training with familiar partners of people with aphasia. And in that episode, we’ve recorded a discussion with two of the authors, Dr Kirsteen Shrubsole and Professor Emma Power. And their research paper on this subject won the prize for best article in the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders Editors Prize for 2023, so catch that on 10 March. Thank you very much. 

MUSIC PLAYS: 0:09:14

END OF TRANSCRIPT: 0:09:23