'Mind the Gap' RCSLT conference 2014

Every other year the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists hold a two day conference. It is attended by practitioners and academics from the United Kingdom and internationally. This event more than all others in the portfolio of RCSLT events, focuses on the challenges and opportunities facing the profession and provides a platform for dissemination of new innovations for evidence-based practice.

BSLTRU likes to support this event and is passionate about bridging the gap between research and practice, so it was a great pleasure to have a number of opportunities to present and be represented at the conference. 

Professor Sue Roulstone, Dr Gaye Powell, Dr Julie Marshall, Dr Lydia Morgan and Sam Harding, ran a workshop entitled 'Understanding the evidence for speech and language therapy for preschool children with speech and language impairment'.

Sam Harding gave a presentation about 'Enhancing the quality and usefulness of published research: lessons from 'Child Talk' systematic review'.

Dr Yvonne Wren was one of the presenters in a workshop that focused on 'Research in developmental speech impairment: What questions should we be asking?'.

Karen Davies, a PhD student associated with the 'Child Talk' programme presented findings from one element of her thesis - 'Partnership with parents: Speech and language therapists' role in changing behaviours and conceptions'.

Karen Davies presenting some of her PhD findings

Dr Ros Merrick gave an oral presentation of work from her PhD, and Dr Rena Lyons presented a poster outlining some of her PhD findings. Both of these programmes of work had been supervised by Prof Roulstone. Lastly Prof Roulstone also represented the unit as a co-author on a presentation about language and behaviour which used ALSPAC data.

With a lot to fit in over the course of the two days, it is a challenge to make the most of the networking opportunities.  However, the unit members are not shy in engaging with people, so we caught up with old friends (See photo of Profs Sue Roulstone and Pam Enderby) and made new ones at the conference social. 

Left - Pam Enderby, Right - Sue Roulstone

Last Dance at the Conference Social

As the past chair 'Bryony Simpson' of the RCSLT said 'you can't be a great therapist if you can't have fun!'

We hope that everyone we talked to had a wonderful time and learnt a lot. We know that the unit benefited from our discussions.  If you are interested the RCSLT is having a post conference round up using webinar technology which you can register for here.