RCSLT August News: spotlight on Wales inc 2026 elections, Welsh version of CAUK and more; plus quick round up from rest of the UK

In our update this month:
 
For Wales:

• Preparing for the Senedd elections in 2026: https://www.rcslt.org/wales/#section-2 
• Work has begun on a Welsh language version of CAUK training, funded by the National Lottery. (See original CAUK training: https://communication-access.co.uk/) 
• What’s happened following the launch of the State of the Nation report (See here: https://www.rcslt.org/wales/#section-2 ) in January.

Opportunities to get involved:

• Frailty task and finish group.
• Capturing evidence on the impact of Additional Learning Needs legislation for a Senedd committee inquiry.
• New survey for independent members.

Around the UK:

• Behind the scenes on SEND reform and workforce matters.
• News about waiting list levels (people coming off) and graduate guarantee for nurses and midwives – AHP concern.
• Co-signed a letter to PM on oracy, Oracy 21.
• BSL plan for English education; Guernsey communication boards
• Book your place at the RCSLT Conference 2025: https://www.rcslt.org/news/book-your-place-at-rcslt-conference-2025/ 

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

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-august-news-spotlight-on-wales-inc-2026-elections-welsh-version-of-cauk-and-more-plus-quick-round-up-from-rest-of-the-uk  

Transcript Date: 

26 August 2025

Speaker Key (delete/anonymise if not required): 

HOST:                         VICTORIA HARRIS

CAROLINE:                CAROLINE WALTERS

DEREK:                      DEREK MUNN 

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HOST: 0:00:06 Hello and welcome to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists news podcast. It's Monday, 18 August and today we’re excited because we have a spotlight on Wales. We’ll be hearing from our special guest, Caroline Walters, who is the External Affairs Manager at our Wales office in Cardiff. We’ll also be getting an overview of other big news from Derek Munn, Director of Policy and Public Affairs. And I'm Vicky, their colleague and Head of Learning.

Good morning and bore da. And so I’ll go over to you Caroline. Big welcome to the podcast Caroline. What are the things you're working on right now?

CAROLINE: 0:00:38 Bore da and thank you very much for the welcome. I think there are two main priorities for the Wales office at the moment and they are our Senedd elections, or our Welsh parliament elections in 2026. And the development of the Welsh language version of the Communication Access Symbol UK.

If I talk a little bit about our elections firstly. These are being toted as the most significant elections in Wales since devolution back in 1999. And that’s for a number of reasons. We’ve had significant reforms to our Senedd. We’ll be growing in number from 60 Senedd members up to 96 and they’ll be voted in via a purely proportional system and we’ll now have 60 super constituencies rather than the previous 40. Really significant changes.

And the other thing which is being talked about widely is what that future Senedd might look like. Since the dawn of devolution, Welsh Labour has been in governing in some form in Wales that the poles are suggesting that is all set to change. Plaid Cymru and Reform are polling very strongly and support for Welsh Labour is currently, in the polls, looking like it's reduced significantly, they're polling as the third party, which is a very significant change. But, as we know, polls might not tell the whole story, so we’ll have to wait to see what happens in May next year.

But what this means for us, I guess, as a professional body, is we really have to think about the conversations that we’re having. Are we talking to the right people who may or may not be in charge next May. As RCSLT, we’ve been doing a lot of work to produce key ask but we’re also working very closely with our colleagues in the other allied health professions, as Allied Health Professions Federation Cymru. We’ve been talking to political parties about their manifestos and our key asks and we’ve also been attending all the main political party conferences. There's lots of work to do in this space and potentially massive changes in Wales next May.

The other topic I wanted to talk about today is the development of the Welsh language version of Communication Access UK. We know many of the listeners of the podcast will be aware of Communication Access UK and the training and the symbol and its aim to ensure inclusive communication for all. It's been available in English for some time now but, thanks to National Lottery funding, we’re now able to create a Welsh language version. Which is really exciting. 

We’re delighted that we’ve been able to recruit members as coordinators for the project and peer reviewers, and we’ve also got people with lived experience on board. We’re looking forward to filming service users over the rest of the summer, pulling together the content to launch the new training and symbol in the Welsh language later this year. Which will be an amazing opportunity.

HOST: 0:03:36 Just out of interest, the last time the Wales office featured in this podcast was back in January and your colleague, Pippa Cottrell, was talking about the State of the Nation. Which is a report about the speech and language therapy workforce in Wales and that was launched in the Senedd. What's been happening on that since then?

CAROLINE: 0:03:52 Yeah, that’s right. We launched our State of the Nation report back in January at our big event and the report was really an opportunity to take a moment in time to look at the diversity in the profession, our current workforce, current demand and what we might be seeing down the line, and what we would like to see in terms of our future workforce. And we’ve been really thrilled by the reception to the report.

It's led to a Senedd debate, an hour-long debate in February. We’ve had really good conversations with stakeholders and achieved some media coverage. But I think, most importantly for us, and this is always what we’d hope to achieve with the report, is that many of our members have told us that they have found the report useful for their own local influencing. Whether that’s talking about workforce planning or building business cases.

I think our next steps now is to look at creating a much shorter update version of the State of the Nation. We’re hoping to do it annually, so we’ll be looking to produce that now for spring 2026, and we’re really keen to get members involved in helping us shape that report so it's as useful as possible. We’ve got a call out at the moment for members interested in being involved in a short task and finish group to help us do that work to come forward. Yeah, please get in touch if you're interested in being involved.

HOST: 0:05:09 I will put links to all of the things you’ve mentioned in our show notes so that people can get involved. Are there any other opportunities for RCSLT members to have their say, or indeed other stakeholders?

CAROLINE: 0:05:19 Yeah, absolutely. We’ve always got lots going on, as do all the teams across the RCSLT. We’re always hoping to do a piece of work on frailty. We know this is of real interest to lots of our members. We’re seeing new posts in this area, so we’re hoping just to produce a short briefing, which members can use in their local influencing work. Again, we’re hoping to have a task and finish group on this, very keen to hear from members who would be keen to be involved in that over the autumn.

Additional learning needs, which is equivalent of our SEND, is always a matter of interest to speech and language therapists here in Wales. We’ll be capturing evidence ahead of a Children’s Committee enquiry on additional learning needs, so keen to hear from members on their views. 

Pippa’s also going to be leading on a new survey for independent members, to ensure that we’re representing them and we’re keen to hear their views on what needs to be done in Wales. Lots going on.

HOST: 0:06:12 Thank you. Okay, turning to Derek now. Just thinking about the rest of the UK, what else do you think listeners need to know?

DEREK: 0:06:19 I think, over the summer, we’re seeing some of the UK government, so England, policy conversations continue that we talked about before. In particular, we’re involved in a lot of behind the scenes stuff around SEND reform and also around workforce matters, where the NHS England workforce plan follows up on the 10 year plan, particularly conversations around the new neighbourhood health services.

In the news you’ll have seen [inaudible 0:06:47] about waiting list levels and where they really are, and the extent to which there’s a genuine fall as opposed to people being taken off the list or going private or different reasons like that. 

The main news story was around what the Government was calling graduate guarantee of first places for nurses and midwives. And that’s caused some controversy amongst allied health colleagues. Paramedic colleagues and physio colleagues are particularly unhappy that this graduate guarantee only applies to nurses and midwives. I think the recruitment and retention issues are slightly different for us but, all the same, it does send a message about where allied health is recognised or not when the chips are down.

The debate around oracy in schools carries on and we were one of a number of organisations that wrote to the Prime Minister about spoken language in education, and that’s got some traction in the media. 

And a couple more things. There's a document out which is a plan for British Sign Language in schools in England, which is worth a look if you're interested in that. 

And finally, I wanted to big up the Channel Islands for once, which we don’t mention often. Because, in Guernsey, there's a particular rollout going on across the Island of communication boards.

I think those are my sum up of public affairs updates. While I'm here I must just say that you can now book for the RCSLT Conference at the end of November. It's 26/27 November, you can book on the website. The usual opportunities for learning, professional development and for networking and obviously this year we’re particularly celebrating the 80th anniversary of the RCSLT. Please take a look at the conference booking page.

HOST: 0:08:23 Thank you Derek and Caroline. I'm just going to let you know that the next news podcast is on 18 September, one month from now. And to note as well that, from 2026, we’ll no longer be using the SoundCloud platform for our podcasts but you will still be able to use all the major podcast apps, including Spotify, Apple and Amazon.

MUSIC PLAYS: 0:08:33-0:08:53 
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