RCSLT - Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists

RCSLT news Dec 2025: review of the year; lots in Scotland; head and neck cancer; House of Lords committee on Autism Act and more

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In our update this month Derek Munn, Director of Policy and Public Affairs at the RCSLT covers:



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Transcript Name: 

RCSLT News December 2025    

Transcript Date: 

24 December 2025

 

Speaker Key (delete/anonymise if not required): 

HOST:                         VICTORIA HARRIS

DM:                             DEREK MUNN

 

 

MUSIC PLAYS: 0:00:00-0:00:05

 

HOST:                      0:00:05 It’s Tuesday 16 December, I’m Vicky Harris, Head of Learning at the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, or the RCSLT as we’re sometimes called, and I’m joined by my colleague Derek Munn, Director of Policy and Public Affairs, to catch up on news relating to speech and language therapy, and because it’s the end of the year and out last podcast of the year we might just get a bit reflective on what’s been happening. Good morning, Derek.

 

DM:                           0:00:28 Hello.

 

HOST:                      0:00:29 As I said, this is our last podcast of the year and it’s also been a significant year because it’s been the one in which RCSLT celebrated its 80th anniversary, so it only feels right that we look back a bit and we think about what’s happened over the last year. I wonder what do you feel are the big changes or even the steps forward this year?

 

DM:                           0:00:49 I well remember, Vicky, when we were making plans for our 75th anniversary back in 2020. That got kind of overtaken by events with the pandemic, not so much with the 80th this year, but we’ve used this as a kind of backdrop for things that we can do. 

 

I think in my world of politics and government 2025 was about the new UK Labour Government bedding in, and we know that that’s been challenging for them in some respects at the same time as the political cycle in Scotland and Wales moves towards the national elections there that will take place in 2026. 

 

The government would want to point to reductions in waiting lists and other delivery that they would see in England, I think in our world, the year was kind of dominated by the decision to merge NHS England back into the Department of Health and at the same time dramatically reconfigure Integrated Care Boards, and just as ever, that kind of structural change and working out what that would mean, at the same time as SENDs, special education needs and disability, was subject to ongoing delay in terms of the performance that it would make. I think that was the big picture backdrop.

 

                                 All the same, at UK level we managed to make some significant progress on primary progressive aphasia. We managed to work alongside people with lived experience on the invest in speech and language therapy debate in Parliament and the subsequent meeting with the Minister, and towards the year end we had a big win in terms of the inclusion of oracy and spoken language in the curriculum.

 

                                 Looking across the UK, we had for the second time a very successful VoiceBox competition in Scotland, with children telling jokes with politicians to raise the profile. In Wales, we’ve launched the Allied Health Professionals Federation brand, AHPF Cymru, and seen some real doors opening for the AHP sector as a result of that. In Northern Ireland, we were able to launch at the Northern Ireland Assembly with Ministers our Language Launchpad resource for early language, and we also had the particularly striking influencing win of a doubling of student numbers in Northern Ireland.

 

                                 The year ended with the Budget. Not a huge amount for us, I mean, there was some back and forth about what it meant for SEND reform and would it come off the schools’ budget, and then we were told it wouldn’t come off the schools’ budget but that basically the Department for Education will absorb nationally the cost of the forthcoming reforms. 

 

Then there was a lot of capital money for new neighbourhood health centres. Which is fine, we’re very keen to emphasise, as the ten-year plan does, that it’s not just about buildings, it’s about neighbourhood health services. They’ve got a lot of potential, but they’ve got to take account of everything that different professionals, including us, can offer, and the excellence that already exists in community services.

 

HOST:                      0:04:03 There’s been a lot coming out from the governments of the UK nations recently which I’ve noticed which impacts on speech and language therapy, and I wonder if you could take us on a tour of the UK and what key things are happening where.

 

DM:                           0:04:14 Yes, I was struck preparing for this podcast today, Vicky, that may be a week before Christmas as we record but there’s a heck of a lot that’s taken place in the last month. 

 

I want to kick off with Scotland actually, because we have been working in the background for years, and I mean years, to try and get a national plan around early years speech, language and communication, and it has finally appeared from the Scottish Government. We welcome it in terms of what it says rhetorically about communication underpinning child development, it has a focus on prevention and early intervention. Of course, you’ve now got to make it real, particularly with the uncertainty of a change of government, but the fact that we’ve now got the Scottish Government Early Years Language Plan is a really big hit for us.

 

                                 There was also some interesting research in Scotland with a big study around the effect of the COVID lockdown on toddlers. It looked at a quarter of a million children in Scotland who were between one and three years old at the time, so it’s the largest study of its kind in Europe on child developmental outcomes. It found that the number of children with at least one developmental issue, which would include speech, language and communication, increased by 6, 7% during the lockdown periods. This was consistent across different developmental concerns.

 

                                 Now the children who were in that study have now started primary school or will shortly be starting primary school, so I think the knowledge that we got a 7% increase in speech, language and communication needs in the cohort now going through in primary in Scotland, and we’ve got no reason to believe it’s different elsewhere, shows just why they national Scottish plan of early years language is so important. And links, interestingly, we’ve talked a lot this year about SEND reform in England and I’m always keen to emphasise the four different systems in the countries in the UK. 

 

In Scotland, where you talk about additional support needs, ASN, and it’s largely done through education in school, BBC Scotland is reporting this month the number of children in Scottish schools requiring additional support is now as high as 43%, so the system in Scotland is very different but actually that challenge for schools in dealing with support needs is still there.

 

                                 Moving over to England, there’s been the usual plethora of SEND-related developments. Best Start Family Hubs, which is something we’ve been keeping an eye on, they’re meant to be a one-stop shop for parents needing SEND service, and that’s good if we can make it work in terms of speech and language therapy. I’ve already mentioned the capital funding for SEND provision in mainstream.

 

                                 Then we turn to adults. Getting It Right First Time, which works across the system in England, has published a head and neck cancer report which we were heavily engaged in and we value its assessment of how things are organised and its recognition of the impact that head and neck cancer can have on speech, swallowing, voice communication, and therefore the need for speech and language therapy as a core pillar of provision for head and neck cancer. The report talks about the contribution we make through the whole journey, treatment, rehab, palliative, so we were pleased with that.

 

                                 The House of Lords is reviewing the Autism Act and the committee report highlights speech and language and communication, quotes quite a lot from the written evidence that we submitted to the House of Lords Committee on it. It talks about the role of speech and language therapy in meeting autistic people’s support in healthcare, in education, screening, criminal justice assessment, reasonable adjustments, all of that, so we were pleased to see that in the review of the Autism Act.

 

                                 I’ve talked before about the Inclusive Parliament coalition, which we’re a big part of, which is a range of charity partners, and we’ve been working to influence the House of Commons’ Modernisation Committee’s work on making parliamentary process and the parliamentary estate more accessible. The report of the Committee has now come out. It talks a lot about accessibility barriers. It includes commitments around embedding accessibility and accessible formats and organisational culture, but the accessible formats which include easy read, include audio, large print, and also alongside that the language which is BSL, but there’s more that we need to see from the Modernisation Committee on speech, language and communication really, so a lot this month as we head into Christmas.

 

HOST:                      0:08:59 That’s a lot, as I always say, but is there anything else you’d like to highlight?

 

DM:                            0:09:03 The office of the CAHPO, the Chief Allied Health Professions Officer for England are very keen for the speech and language therapy profession to be aware that they’ve commissioned NHS Elect to co-produce what they’re calling a transformation toolkit for NHS community speech and language therapy services for children and young people. This is meant to support the system in England with addressing waiting times and unwarranted variation in children’s SLT. They want us to know that this resource has been commissioned and for us to engage with it. 

 

                                 Likewise, another thing which NHS England have commissioned is university research into safe staffing amongst allied health professionals. This has the potential to be very helpful because of the tendency for safe staffing to focus on acute, to focus on nursing, and this is a welcome recognition of the need to consider what we would call safe and effective or safe and quality staffing right across the allied health professions, so we’ll look forward to engaging with both of those new developments.

 

HOST:                      0:10:10 Thank you, Derek. It sounds like it’s going to be another busy year in 2026. We will be back in the New Year with our next news podcast on 23 January. Also, you might like to know that we have released another podcast yesterday as part of our International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders series, and in this one we chat with Loretta Gasparini about the research she’s led on finding a tool to predict persistent language disorders. The aim is to identify young children who are likely to have persisting language difficulties so that they can then be recruited into research and to help us bring a strong evidence base and ultimately to support them to thrive, so do have a listen.

 

MUSIC PLAYS: 0:10:49-0:11:04

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