RCSLT News June 2025: UK spending review; news on ICBs; Voicebox competition and more

The June news podcast for the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists featuring Derek Munn, Director of Policy and Public Affairs. Published 16 June 2025. 

In our update this month:

- What the Chancellor's Spending Review means for speech and language therapy;

- Developments across the UK covering children; the Health Select Committee First 1,000 days of Life  inquiry; involvement in the UK Parliament modernisation committee; Integrated Care Board blueprint; and the Northern Ireland curriculum.

- Voice Box competition in Scotland: winner of the best joke is announced.  This year’s winning joke came from Ezra: “I bought 10 bees, but I was given 11 bees. So, I said to the beekeeper, ‘Why is there an extra bee?’ The beekeeper said, ‘That one’s a freebie.’” 

- #RockingAphasia https://www.facebook.com/RockingAphasia/?locale=en_GB 

- Inspire Leadership programme for RCSLT members: https://www.rcslt.org/news/rcslt-leadership-programme-applications-open/

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 Name: 

rcslt-news-june-2025

Transcript Date: 

20 June 2025 

HOST:                         VICTORIA HARRIS

DEREK:                      DEREK MUNN 

MUSIC PLAYS: 0:00:00-0:00:04

HOST:                         0:00:04 Good morning. It’s Monday, 16 June. I’m Vicky Harris, Head of Learning at the RCSLT, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, and I’m here with Derek Munn, my colleague, who is the Director of Policy and Public Affairs, to discuss what policy stuff has been happening relating to speech and language therapy in the UK. 

Last week, a big piece of news was that the Chancellor announced the UK spending review. I wonder, what might this mean for speech and language therapy? 

DEREK:                      0:00:33 There’s a few things, and as always, while it predominantly relates to England, you have what are called the Barnett consequentials, which means money that’s allocated in England is replicated in overall terms in the devolved nations. So, the funding settlement for the NHS in England was 3% real terms – that means above inflation. That, in turn, block of money will be added on for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, but they don’t have to spend it on health. But in England, 3% for the NHS, people are saying that will just about keep up, but that will depend on pay rises. 

But there are other things, certainly, in the spending view of interest to us. There was a focus on reforming children’s social care, for example. Focus on children’s homes, on foster care placements. There was a big chunk of money in the sums for special education needs and disability, for SEND. So I said there this is helpful in other ways. We’re now told that the white paper on schools will be in the autumn. This is the one which will include proposals of how governments can approach reform in SEND, and in particular, there’s focus, as we know, on education, health, and care plans, and I will have more to say about that later on. But that timeline, now, the white paper proposing legislative change is in the autumn, is very helpful to know. 

Transformation fund for public services. I mean, speaking personally, that feels a bit like something you’ve heard before, but they have a particular mention of vulnerable cohorts of people. And then the money to back up the already planned expansion of mental health support in schools. So, that’s quite important. 

The Families First Partnership programme is also mentioned there, and that’s about giving children and families better access to support service. The talk is about early intervention. Again, it’s all in how it comes out in reality. 

Specifically on SEND, I mentioned there’s a lot of money there – £547m in year one, and £230m... Whatever they’re planning, they’re expecting it to cost a lot of money. That’s what we draw from that. 

HOST:                         0:02:43 And since we last spoke in May, what other significant developments have there been in health and social care policy across the UK? 

DEREK:                      0:02:49 Let’s finish off with the stuff around children and schools. Educational health and care plans, there’s been a lot of, well, the jargon is ‘rolling the pitch’, you know, preparing the ground for an announcement, and talk about whether education, health, and care plans work for children with autism. Talk about the continuing growth in the number of EHC plans being requested. It’s exponential. That’s okay. We’re waiting to see what the details are. We’ve always talked a lot about children with speech, language, and communication needs who don’t have EHC plans and how they get their needs met through what’s called the local offer. 

There was one rather disturbing piece in the times where a source from the Department for Education suggested that children with speech, language, and communication needs didn’t need EHCPs because they would get SLT in schools, and we felt there were some heroic assumptions in that about the availability of SLT in schools around the nature of SLCN as a primary need for SEND. So, I’m writing to people more senior in DfE to say, look, we really need to have a conversation about this. 

We’ve been waiting around the spending review for news of the extension of a couple of pilots that we’re very keen on. Even though it’s pilots Wes Streeting says the NHS in England has more pilots than the Air Force. But pilots that we wanted to see extended – ELSEC -you’ll have heard us talk a lot about this model for making use of the whole workforce for whole class provision. What’s interesting is the data is starting to show that where you’ve got ELSEC in place, there is a lower demand for EHC plans. In terms of ways to go forward we’re pleased that the nine pathfinder areas at the moment are carrying on, and PINS, which is about neurodiversity in schools, and we wanted that to be extended too. So, that’s all of that. Let’s turn to parliament. 

We have been invited to a number of committees. I think I mentioned last time that we’d given evidence to the Education Select Committee on SEND. We’ve now been asked by the Health Select Committee to give evidence on the first 1,000 days. What we’re doing here, where possible, is using expert leaders in the profession, members of the Royal College, to be our witnesses. We’ve also been invited to the House of Commons Modernisation Committee, and this is part of a coalition of service user organisations and charities. They’re looking at how to make parliament up-to-date and accessible. And we’ve said, look, while you’re doing that, one of the things you should be thinking about is accessibility to people with communication needs. And that can mean everything from accessible communication in the parliamentary estate to whether you can use British Sign Language in the Chamber of the House of Commons. We were very pleased that they’ve looked at our submission and invited us to come and talk about it. 

The 10-year-plan was due in June. It might still happen, though it looks now it’s most likely to be in July. As we record on Monday the 16th I’ve been going to a meeting tomorrow to hear, apparently, something about that. But people will remember that the same day that the NHS England abolition/merger was announced, there is talk of a big cut in integrated care board management costs. We’ve now got the blueprint for what’s called model ICBs going forward and they flow from what Lord Darzi said, which was that ICB should focus on being strategic commissioners. 

The implication of the model blueprint and the big cut in money for integrated care boards is that they’re going to merge. Two or three ICBs are going to merge, and we’re starting to see in the background the conversations about which geographical area is going to merge with which. 

And then a change in the functions, with some ICB functions going up to regional and national level, for example, data and some ICB functions being returned to individual health providers, and SEND would be an example that’s on that list. Some things we would welcome in the middle about taking on more of a population health approach and more responsibility for that. So, it’s a mixed thing, and we’re taking time to produce our own response to it and work out what it means to the profession. But it’s big. It’s a big area. 

Finally, let’s go elsewhere in the UK. Northern Ireland has a new report on curriculum and we were extremely pleased that that report took full account of our recent language launch pad, programming resources, and children’s communication and language needs were appropriately recognised. 

The Voice Box competition, our children’s joke telling competition that they do in the parliament of the UK was in Scottish Parliament for the second time at the start of June. Hugely successful. Children from every local authority area in Scotland were finalists, a lot of members of the Scottish Parliament there. As usual, a brilliant way of showcasing and highlighting the importance of all children’s communication to our political leaders. 

HOST:                         0:07:44 Fabulous. Thank you. I’ll find the winning joke and put that in the show notes! Okay, so a few notices before we go. So firstly, June is Aphasia Awareness Month, and aphasia is a language disorder resulting from neurological damage, and it can affect a person’s ability to talk, write, and understand spoken and written language. And everyone can get involved in raising awareness. So, here’s how. You need to find a stone, fairly flat one, and paint a design, and write #rockingaphasia on it, and then go out and place it somewhere where someone can find it, take a photo of it in its location, and then post the photo on Facebook or LinkedIn with the same hashtag – #rockingaphasia. And then you sit back and wait for someone to find it. 

We know that stones have already been found across Europe, in the USA, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, Australia. That list has probably increased since I wrote these notes. And so yeah, so get involved and spread awareness. 

The other thing is, if you are a member, you may be interested to find out that our Inspire Leadership programme, which we launched last year, is going to be running a second cohort this year and applications open today, so if you’re interested, head along to our website, and I’ll put up a link in the notes as well. 

And finally, before we leave, just say we are having our next catch up on 24 July, so we’ll see you then. 

MUSIC PLAYS: 0:09:06

END OF TRANSCRIPT: 0:09:13