'Assessing speech in children from multilingual backgrounds – current research and clinical applications'

We are pleased to announce the next study day will be jointly run by the South West Speech CEN with the Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit. The topic is 'Assessing speech in children from multilingual backgrounds – current research and clinical applications' 

Barbara May Bernhardt and Joe Stemberger are going to present on  “An international cross-linguistic project in typical and protracted phonological development: Clinical Applications”. You can read more about their work at http://phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca/

We will also have talks along the same theme from Jane Speake (University of Sheffield and previously head of Cambridge) and Rhonwen Lewis (UWIC). The event will end with a panel discussion where attendees can ask questions of the panel. 

More details about the talks  will follow shortly along with the booking information. It will be on Friday 19th October at The Vassall Centre in Bristol and will be an afternoon session (13.30-16.30). We have tried to keep costs low, and it will be £16.31 (which includes eventbrite fees of £1.31)

To book your place please use the eventbrite site: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/assessing-speech-in-children-from-multilingual-backgrounds-tickets-47541983352

Details of presenters and other information will be posted on the CEN facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/SWSpeechCEN

Folia Phoniatrica et Logopedica Special Edition

Folia Phoniatrica et Logopedica Special Edition

Themed call: Transcription of children’s speech

Guest Editors: Yvonne Wren, Sharynne McLeod and Sarah Verdon

Folia Phoniatrica et Logopedica is pleased to announce information about its next special edition on transcription of children’s speech.

The aim of this special edition is to bring together recent research in the field of transcription of children’s speech and understand the implications this has for clinical practice and research activity.

We invite expressions of interest via email to be submitted by May 1st 2018 to Dr Yvonne Wren (yvonne.wren@bristol.ac.uk). Please use ‘Transcription Special Issue’ in the subject line.

Expressions of interest must include:  

1. A proposed title
2. Author names and affiliations
3. Brief author biosketch of no more than 50 words
4. An abstract (no more than 300 words): For papers reporting original research, state the primary objective and any hypothesis tested; describe the research design and your reasons for adopting that methodology; state the methods and procedures employed, including where appropriate tools, hardware, software, the selection and number of study areas/subjects, and the central experimental interventions; state the main outcomes and results, including relevant data (or what you expect to find); and state the conclusions that might be drawn from these data and results, including their implications for further research or application/practice.  For reviews, state the primary objective of the review; the reasoning behind your literature selection; and the way you critically analyse the literature; state the main outcomes and results of your review (or what you expect to find); and state the conclusions that might be drawn, including their implications for further research or application/practice.
5. A statement to indicate that you will be able to submit the manuscript before 30^th September 2018.

The editors (Professor Sharynne McLeod, Dr Sarah Verdon and Dr Yvonne Wren) will review all submissions and invite a select few to be submitted as full manuscripts. Authors will be notified about this by end of May 2018.

All selected submissions will undergo blind peer review.

Estimated formal publication is 2019.

Portsmouth and Southampton families to benefit from research into language delays

BSLTRU would like to congratulate Dr Deborah Gibbard and research team in their successful grant.  The BSLTRU team look forward to working with the Solent NHS Trust investigating children diagnosed with delays in talking.
As part of the research, 160 Portsmouth and Southampton families whose 2- 3 year olds have been clinically diagnosed with early language delay will be invited to participate in a group based programme.
Dr Deborah Gibbard, recipient of the £314,711 grant from the Nuffield Foundation, said 8-10 families per group will receive 10 sessions over a 20 week period as part of the study.
“Our intervention, delivered by a speech and language therapist, is designed to teach parents how to develop their child’s language at home. This has been shown to be broadly effective and we are grateful to the Foundation for supporting our local study to help disadvantaged families in our cities.
According to Dr Gibbard, early treatment for language problems is important to help prevent low educational achievement and poorer outcomes later in life. Additionally, early intervention and parental involvement in treatment has proven beneficial for pre-school children experiencing language development difficulties.
“A pilot project we developed in Portsmouth showed enhanced parent intervention is viable in a community setting. This study will look at the effects on parental skills, attitude, confidence and engagement with treatment, in addition to outcomes for children,” added Dr Gibbard.
Success of the parent groups will be valuable for socially disadvantaged communities given the long lasting effects of children's language delay on education, personality, employment and wider society.
“More importantly, the families will benefit from a reduction in health and social inequalities that impact on the individual, family and wider communities, ensuring children have the best possible start in life.”
The study will, therefore, target socially disadvantaged families and equip parents with skills to help their children overcome language challenges. Families will be recruited through a speech and language therapist, following an initial assessment with the service.
The research trial, which will run from  April 2017 to March 2020, will be led by Dr Gibbard. Other team members include Professor Sue Roulstone of University of West of England, Dr Chris Markham of University of Portsmouth and Dr Clare Smith, speech and language therapist from Solent NHS Trust.

Dr Gibbard can be contacted via deborah.gibbard@solent.nhs.uk for further information.

• For more information about Solent NHS Trust please contact Elton Dzikiti, Public Relations Manager, Solent NHS Trust on 023 8060 8934 or email elton.dzikiti@solent.nhs.uk
• For more information about Nuffield Foundation, please email Fran Bright at fbright@nuffieldfoundation.org

So What's Next - The Communication Trust Research Project

At the start of this month (February 2016) The Communication Trust published a report that we had been commissioned by them to do.  We worked with six schools and heard from 54 children and over 100 parents. The report is available on-line at this link, where you can access the full report and the executive summary free of charge:

www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/involve

We have wanted to provide an additional summary, to tell the parents and children that were involved, what we found and what The Communication Trust will be doing with the report and its findings. We hope that this will be particularly interesting for the children that were involved in the discussions with us, but also in general to children who are involved in decision making at school. It is important for them to know that we value their views and their contributions are being used to improve things for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs.  The image is a feedback sheet to work through with the children.

So what are The Communication Trust doing next?

• The research report was emailed out to The Communication Trust’s newsletter audience – that’s 25,000 people who are interested in children and young people’s speech, language and communication.
• It was also sent it to the 52 member organisations of The Communication Trust and their 273 Local Champions who work across England to support children and young people with SLCN.
• The research findings will go directly to the Department for Education at the end of March (2016). They will be able to read the report, ask questions they have about it and find out how many people have been using it in their work.
• Copies of the executive summary will be taken to the Education Show (9000 people attend) and Nasen Live (1000 people attend). This will be an excellent way for people who might not know so much about SLCN to find out more about the perspectives of children and young people with SLCN, and their families, on decision making and involvement.
• The findings from the report have helped The Communication Trust (TCT) to write a toolkit for people who work in schools and colleges to help them with useful ideas and activities to better involve children and young people with SLCN. This toolkit will be available later in February on the TCT website. It will be a really important way of turning the information provided by the children, young people and parents who took part in the research into practical support for teaching and school staff.
• TCT will also make sure that they use all the really useful information from the children, young people and parents in the future work of TCT. 

We NEED your help!

The Communication Trust (TCT) is widely recognised for its provision of research and resources to support the workforce who delivers interventions for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). A particular focus of TCT’s work, with funding from the Department for Education, has been to support the ongoing dissemination of the Better Communication Research Programme (BCRP). One aspect of this work, the development of the ‘What Works’ database, illustrates TCT’s concern to base guidance and support for practitioners on research evidence. TCT has also been commissioned to provide guidance concerning the support of the workforce regarding the involvement of children and young people with SLCN in decisions that concern them. This is in response to the Children and Family Act 2014 and the related Code of Practice which requires that children and young people must be involved in “discussions and decisions about their individual support and local provision” in order to increase participation and inclusion of children and young people, the early identification of needs and the delivery of high quality support. TCT has already developed a resource to support professionals to implement the Code of Practice (“Communicating the Code”) which contains a chapter on the involvement of children and young people with SLCN. TCT intends to develop practical guidance for practitioners to ensure that children and young people with SLCN are fully involved in discussions and decisions about their individual support and about local provision. It is the intention of TCT that this guidance be informed by independent research that investigates the experiences of children and young people with SLCN and their parents of current practice regarding their involvement since the introduction of the Code of Practice and their views of best practice for their involvement in developing their individual support particularly around the setting of outcomes and in developing local services. The Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit (BSLTRU) are working with the TCT to achieve this.  But we need your help! Would you be willing to complete a short on-line survey (click here), or maybe take part in a telephone interview (about 30 minutes; email lydia.morgan@speech-therapy.org.uk, or call 0117 340 6529).

Both the survey and the interview are for the parents or carers of a child or young person aged from 0-25 years who has speech, language and communication needs.  This survey is part of a study led by Prof Sue Roulstone (susan.roulstone@uwe.ac.uk) from the Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit and the University of the West of England, on behalf of The Communication Trust.

NEW - Guide for commissioners from Better Communication CIC supported by The Communication Trust

The Communication Trust have announced the release of a new resource available to support the commissioning of services for children and young people with SLCN.  This resource is based on the findings of the landmark Better Communication Research Programme commissioned following the Bercow Review.

Prof Sue Roulstone and Dr Yvonne Wren of the Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit and the University of the West of England, who led those aspects of the Better Communication Research Programme based here in Bristol, welcomed the new resource: ‘It is very exciting to see such a useful application of our research. Marie Gascoigne, the developer of the resource has a wealth of experience in working with commissioners and has identified the key findings of relevance to the commissioning process”

Population approaches to identification, prediction and outcomes of children with lasting language impairment

The Bristol Speech& Language Therapy Research Unit are pleased to welcome Dr Penny Levickis on Thursday 9th April from 3.00 to 5.00 pm to speak on:

Population approaches to identification, prediction and outcomes of children with lasting language impairment

Penny Levickis is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Centre of Research Excellence in Child Language at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.   After developing a novel mechanism for the rigorous coding of a large number of parent-child interactions as part of her PhD, she demonstrated that specific maternal linguistic behaviours predict preschool language outcomes in a community-based sample of slow-to-talk toddlers. She is now extending this work to examine the extent to which maternal responsive behaviours may be measured in addition to the traditional use of low language status in the early years to identify those children most at risk of persistent language impairment. Penny and colleagues are also following up a large community-based cohort of children as they turn 9 years of age to develop a risk chart for health professionals to use as a method of predicting absolute risk of lasting language impairment.

During the afternoon other members of the team at BSLTRU will present other ongoing research about Parent-Child Interaction Therapy.

Venue: Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit, Frenchay Hospital (Yes  -this will be one of the last events in the research unit) Bristol BS16 1LE.

There will be a small charge of £10, payable on arrival to support our costs. Please contact Fay.Smith@speech-therapy.org.uk for further details and register here.

Details of presentations below.

Dr Penny Levickis

Population approaches to identification, prediction and outcomes of children with lasting language impairment

Penny Levickis is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Centre of Research Excellence in Child Language (CRE-CL) at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.  After developing a novel mechanism for the rigorous coding of a large number of parent-child interactions as part of her PhD, she demonstrated that specific maternal linguistic behaviours predict preschool language outcomes in a community-based sample of slow-to-talk toddlers. She is now extending this work to examine the extent to which maternal responsive behaviours may be measured in addition to the traditional use of low language status in the early years to identify those children most at risk of persistent language impairment. Penny and colleagues are also following up a large community-based cohort of children as they turn 9 years of age to develop a risk chart for health professionals to use as a method of predicting absolute risk of lasting language impairment. 

Inge Klatte

An examination of parent-child interaction therapy in practice

Inge is a Dutch Speech & language therapist completing a three month internship at the Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit (BSLTRU). For her Master’s degree in Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences her thesis is about Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT).

There is a lot of variation in PCIT approaches: between the original interventions, in the way they have been examined, and, in the way speech and language therapists (SLTs) deliver the intervention. This study aims to find the overlapping, critical components of the PCIT interventions, according to the manuals of the existing approaches, the literature and the SLTs. Also, via interviews Inge will explore the rationales SLTs give for the way they structure their interventions.

    

Dr Yvonne Wren.

Using LENA to explore parent-child interaction

Yvonne is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the National Institute of Health Research and member of the research team at BSLTRU. As part of the research for her fellowship, Yvonne is exploring the use of LENA, a device for recording and analysing the speech environment of children from 2 months of age upwards. The audio recording device is worn by the child within a t-shirt or similar and records the child’s speech and their environment for 16 continuous hours. Yvonne will share some pilot data on using LENA.

  

Prof Sue Roulstone

Understanding the effectiveness of adult-child interactions as a component of intervention in pre-school children with primary speech and language impairments

Sue is Professor Emeritus at the University of the West of England and a member of the team at BSLTRU. Over the last few years, Sue has led a programme of research called Child Talk which has examined current clinical practice for pre-school children with primary speech and language impairments, identifying the various components of intervention and the related evidence. This presentation will examine the facilitation of adult-child interactions in therapy in relation to other components of intervention and in terms of the underpinning evidence. As well as presenting findings from Child Talk, Sue will present some ideas that are being worked up as bids for further research funding.

Make sure your voice in heard in the new CQLive!

The RCSLT is co-creating CQLive with its members. The successor to CQ3 will consist of a set of standards and resources to support SLTs to deliver a high-quality service that integrates the HCPC standards of conduct, performance and ethics.

BSLTRU lead by Dr Yvonne Wren is helping to facilitate this in the South West by inviting you to a face to face meeting as part of the process.

Aims and objectives of the face-to-face discussion sessions:

· To generate in-depth insight about one aspect of the HCPC standard of conduct, performance and ethics, with respect to the SLT profession.

· To give RCSLT members an opportunity to contribute to shaping CQ Live in person.

The Bristol CQlive meeting will focus on the following key area ‘Promote and safeguard the interests of service users and carers’.

For more information and to book a place, seehttp://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cqlive-face-to-face-discussio…

Places are limited to just 20 so do book quickly if you are interested in attending.

Dr Penny Levickis is coming to Bristol

The Bristol Speech& Language Therapy Research Unit are pleased to welcome Dr Penny Levickis

On Thursday 9 ^th April from 3.00 to 5.00pm Dr Levickis will speak on:

Population approaches to identification, prediction and outcomes of children with lasting language impairment

Penny Levickis is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Centre of Research Excellence in Child Language at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.   After developing a novel mechanism for the rigorous coding of a large number of parent-child interactions as part of her PhD, she demonstrated that specific maternal linguistic behaviours predict preschool language outcomes in a community-based sample of slow-to-talk toddlers. She is now extending this work to examine the extent to which maternal responsive behaviours may be measured in addition to the traditional use of low language status in the early years to identify those children most at risk of persistent language impairment. Penny and colleagues are also following up a large community-based cohort of children as they turn 9 years of age to develop a risk chart for health professionals to use as a method of predicting absolute risk of lasting language impairment. 

During the afternoon other members of the team at BSLTRU will present other ongoing research about Parent-Child Interaction Therapy.

Venue: Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit, Frenchay Hospital (this will be one of the last events in the research unit before we move to our new offices in Southmead Hospital) Bristol BS16 1LE.

There will be a small charge of £10, payable on arrival to support our costs. Please contact Fay.Smith@speech-therapy.org.uk to let us know if you are coming and/or for further details.

Centre for Health and Clinical Research Conference

On the 5th of November the University of the West of England Centre for Health and Clinical Research (CHCR) hosted a half day conference titled Health research for impact. The conference covered a wide range of talks on topics including patient public involvement, emergency and critical care, long term conditions, child health, health technology and ethics, and evaluation. It was fantastic to see people from diverse health related disciplines come together to discuss the impact of research.

Conference opening!

The Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit (BSLTRU) was fortunate to have a strong presence of the conference with 5 members of staff from BSLTRU giving oral presentations, in addition to PhD student Anna Blackwell having a poster at the conference.

Three presentations from BLSTRU were on findings from the NIHR funded programme ‘Child Talk’ which focused on the development of interventions for primary school children with primary speech and language impairment (PSLI). Lydia Morgan gave a brief overview of the 3 year programme, describing a typology of practice that has emerged from the research. The typology aims to represent the aims of therapy for preschool with PSLI children, and will be hosted on a website, with associated evidence. Part of the evidence for the typology includes a systematic review which our senior researcher on the Child Talk programme, Sam Harding, presented on.  Sam provided a really valuable talk regarding the lessons that can be taken from the review, including advice to all researchers on enhancing the quality and usefulness of research.

Lydia Morgan presenting at the conference

The project manager for Child Talk, Rebecca Coad spoke about the involvement of parents as partners in the Child Talk project. This talk was particularly praised by a champion of patient involvement in research who were encouraged to see a real success story in terms of patient involvement, with useful ideas about engaging and supporting patients to be involved.

Yvonne Wren gave a really engaging talk on her exploration of data from the Avon Longitudinal study. Patterns of speech production of children with persistent speech disorder and children who were typically developing, at 8 years old, were compared and discussed and the clinical implication considered.

The director of the unit, Karen Sage, gave a talk on the use of research outcome measures for participants with aphasia. This work highlighted the value in including and consulting those with health conditions in the development of outcomes. She discussed findings from participants with aphasia in  terms of where they would most like to see change in their communication,  as well as and how aphasia affects their lives.

The conference provided an excellent forum to engage with others in related disciplines, to disseminate our research and to learn lessons about how health research can have impact. It was great to see the BSLTRU’s research so well represented, indicating the important role we have for health research in the region.  

New free Aphasia Awareness Video - PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD

Working with people who have aphasia, it is all too well understood that they can have great communication difficulties.  The challenge is always how health care professionals share this knowledge with other health professionals and members of the community, so they understand the impact it can have on the lives of the individual and those close to them.

This free video resource was designed to help everyone get this message across in a visually dynamic way.  It can be used as part of a training package with other health professionals, with students, or even as a challenge to the health care profession.

We would like to encourage you to watch the video, share the link with friends, family and colleagues.

This is the long version of the video, but a shorter one is available from  https://www.youtube.com/user/understandingaphasia

Other interesting information and insights can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/UnderstandingAphasia

'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.

Blaire Hannan - My experience at Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the research unit. I felt very welcomed and supported, and all the colleagues were keen to ensure my needs were met.

ALSPAC and Children of
the 90's logo

During my time with them I was involved in organising, labelling and batching ALSPAC files to be sent off. This was a big task, as thousands of audio files had to be organised appropriately. Although, there were time limits, I did not feel any pressure, more a drive to finish the task. Colleagues were happy for me to approach the task in my own way.  This project took up most of my time with BSLTRU, but I also input feedback forms, did a reliability check on a research project, and read and summarised various research papers for a grant application.

The experiences widened my eyes as to what is involved in this sector of Speech & Language Therapy. I was made aware of the vast amount of data that are collected from population target groups, and how the same data are shared between different researchers to be used in their research – whilst maintaining confidentially procedures (i.e. saved onto special drives, password e-mails etc.). My understanding of the different roles within a research project increased i.e. it's good to get statisticians involved early, and good co-authors are vital to improve the credibility of your project. Also, the amount of work and procedures involved in accessing grants for various projects impressed and awed me. It seems that you could have someone doing a full-time job just to identify and access grants. I was made aware that despite the effort in applying for grants, it is a highly competitive task and even once funding is secured and the research undertaken, the research findings may not published anyway and if it is, then it may not be in the journal desired by the research team.

 

BSLTRU is currently still based on the Frenchay hospital campus,
part of North Bristol Hospital Trust 

The staff and their dedication were very impressive. They were very happy to answer any questions ad meet any goals you may have had.  I really value my experience with them and hope that I will work with them I the future.

Joe Leeder talks about his internship with BSLTRU

The University of the West of England advertised for students interested in undertaking a sponsored internship at a number of possible research facilities.  I applied for one of these internships at BSTLRU to get experience in a field of research that I found interesting, as well as boosting the credentials on my CV.  I was fortunate enough to be successful at interview and began my placement in August.  The hope was that I would experience many different aspects of research and working with different people during my time at the unit.

For the first two weeks I worked on a research technique called systematic reviewing - a way to gain an overview of all the research evidence into a particular topic.  After hundreds of papers from various resources are collected, it was my job to match each paper against carefully selected criteria. The systematic reviewing process is very time consuming and laborious. However it is worthwhile as the results allow researchers to understand what is already ‘out there’ in terms of evidence. It helps to determine what is missing and whether the research proposed is relevant. It was beneficial for me to see how this process of highlighting and understanding previous research is conducted in an academic environment.

LENA recording unit. This is worn in a vest/top by the child.

For the second two weeks I assisted Anna Blackwell, a student who is carrying out her PhD at the unit. Anna’s longitudinal study is looking at four language delayed children and aims to better understand the dynamic relationship between the child and the parents’ language. Whilst working with Anna, one of my tasks was to undertake a reliability check on some of the data she had collected from the children. This involved using a device called LENA (Language Environment Analysis) which captures audio for 16 hours and is worn by participants.

This audio was analysed using software which determines high conversational counts in 5 minute segments. I transcribed ten, five minute segments from the four different children and applied a series of codes which provided a range of linguistic data. Anna then checked ten percent of the analysis and I did the same for a transcript that she had completed.  This allowed her to obtain reliability statistics for this element of her study.

Working for Anna was particularly interesting; the coding process relied on my linguistic knowledge and helped to develop it, and it was really exciting to be working on a longitudinal project with speech delayed children. I think it’s really interesting to see how speech and language can develop over time and whether a change in the way adults engage with their children effects this development.

 

The research unit relies solely on grants and charities to fund projects. The third part of my placement was to read over and review a grant that was being processed to fund future research. Part of the skill of writing a grant application skill is to be able to write in clear, simple language. With this in mind, during my placement I was asked to summarise abstracts of papers in lay English. This enables a non-expert audience to understand more about the research which is undertaken, without having to worry about complex vocabulary. These lay summaries are then included in grant applications and on the unit web-site. Writing lay summaries wasn't my favourite task, although it was useful and interesting to be able to read some of the research that has already been written in the unit. It also improved my writing skills as I found it particularly hard to adjust the complex concepts to make them accurate.

Throughout the placement I learnt skills that will be invaluable to future work. Systematic reviewing has enabled me to develop a methodological approach to literature reviewing, and to be rigorous in critically assessing the evidence available. Reliability checking has taught me to be thorough, has improved my concentration skills and has allowed me to see how linguistics can be applied in the working world. Such skills will be transferable to any future career and I will use this experience of research to decide whether I want to go on to do study at postgraduate level.

Joe Leeder giving a presentation to the team at BSLTRU about his time there.

I am really grateful to have had the opportunity to have worked in such a friendly, yet professional environment. The work that is undertaken in the unit is designed to provide speech and language therapists with up to date evidence and methods to help those who are speech and or language impaired.  Providing methods and solutions to help others is the underlying theme at the research unit and is what makes such an enjoyable and rewarding environment to work in. I have really enjoyed learning about research and speech and language therapy and hope to further improve my knowledge in the area by conducting my third year thesis at the unit.

My placement has been what could be called ‘eventful’ - Will Dance on his time with the Unit

Will Dance

When I first sent out an email to the Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit detailing my interests in Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) and that I would like to partake in some voluntary work experience, it was very daunting. Having visited the website beforehand and looked at the Research Team it was almost as if I were daring to ask to be placed amongst a team of such experienced people who between them seemed to have this massive expanse of knowledge.

Of course this sense of nervousness soon left when my email was replied to and I was told that there was an opportunity for work experience at the research unit. Immediately I felt a sense of excitement at the prospect of being able to gain work experience in a professional research environment that also has close links to my university.

I think of my three months of work experience as being split into two sections: pre and post my two week holiday/visit to Thailand in July.

View of central Bangkok from a bar I visited on the roof of a 63 story high hotel called the ‘Sky Bar’

Pre Thailand
Something that struck me on beginning my placement at the research unit was how female dominated SLT is. Having done research into SLT as a profession prior to my placement I had read that over 82% of speech and language therapists are female. To be completely honest this made for a nice break as having grown up with two brothers it was nice to move away from such a competitive environment to one where everyone was so welcoming and treated each other with such approbation.

My first task was checking pairs of transcripts of the same audio transcribed by different people for reliability and working out the percentage of same or equivalent phonemes transcribed and also working out a percentage for the difference between the transcripts. This work introduced me to the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children or ‘ALSPAC’.  Having grown up in Bristol my whole life and being (along with all my friends) ‘Children of the 90s’ it was incredibly interesting to learn of such a world-leading study in my own city.  ALSPAC is one of the most in depth studies of its kind and holds a wealth of information about the environmental and genetic factors that affect health and development and so to be involved  in anything to do with it was a privilege.

After checking the reliability of 48 pairs of transcripts,  I moved on to a data management and processing task which involved using a computer to locate, identify and relocate ALSPAC audio files to then be later sent off to America. In this task, I managed to successfully move or ‘batch’ 322 sets of three audio files.

These data management and processing tasks were quite laborious and required considerable time and effort but the knowledge I gained made that irrelevant as I know I have learnt so much from working on them whether it was honing my phonetic skills or researching about ALSPAC in my own time. At times it was challenging to do quite repetitive work but the pros far outweighed any cons. I completed the ALSPAC work the day before I left for Thailand (4^th July).

View from the port of an island in the south of Thailand I visited for two days called Koh Larn

Post Thailand

On my return on the 23^rd July I immediately began work on transcribing audio of an aphasia discussion group where interviewers were asking four people who had aphasia following a stroke ‘If you could change one thing about your communication, what would it be?’. I found myself learning a vast amount from the task as it introduced aphasia to me, something which I knew little about previously and is greatly focused upon within SLT and psycholinguistics.

Upon completing the transcription task, I started writing lay summaries for published journal articles written by members of the research team. I managed to complete six lay summaries, ranging in focus from what it is like living with a a person with semantic dementia to defining communication disability response to the World Report on Disability. This writing not only taught me a huge amount regarding speech and language therapy but also aided me in developing my skills for both academic writing and writing for a lay audience.

When I finally completed all the work I was asked to do (and more as I completed much of it ahead of schedule) I felt a sense of achievement I had not experienced before. The reason for this was because at university it is very straight forward: you study hard and as a result you get a good grade and whilst you are happy with that good grade you are not surprised as it is the result of the effort you put in; similarly if you achieve a poor grade it is because of the effort that was not put in. Whereas when I completed a large piece of work the result was that I felt I had accomplished something more because I was in a professional environment completing work that had importance. Completing a task to a high standard in such an environment was very rewarding as I had to use not only knowledge but apply intuition, use professional skills and even judge and identify problems, aspects that are rarely tested at university and therefore to be told I had excelled in such a task which tested me beyond anything I had done before was incredibly fulfilling.

Interesting life events

My placement has also been what could be called ‘eventful’. Just five days after I started I was driving to the unit through Frenchay with my windows open and a low flying (what some may call suicidal) pigeon flew into my driver’s side window managing to hit me in the side of the head and tumble down into my foot well and become trapped underneath my pedals. I of course immediately slammed on my breaks narrowly missing crashing into the wall that ran alongside the road; I had the rest of the day off and written on the whiteboard my absence was noted as plain and simply ‘hit by pigeon’. Just over a fortnight later I finished work to come out to my car to see my off-side mirror had been what can only be described as destroyed, presumably by someone who decided to drive just a few inches to close. I am pleased to say after these two ‘events’ my placement went without any more major problems.

Summary & Looking ahead

My time at the Bristol Speech & Language Therapy Research Unit gave me an invaluable insight into both what it is like to work in a professional environment and also what it is like to work in a research based environment. I was able to talk about speech and language therapy as a career with members of the research team and I really do feel I have gained a wide understanding of speech and language therapy and many of the different aspects it covers. 

Looking ahead to the future, this work experience has allowed me to acquire transferable skills and the experience to enable me to hit the ground running when I start my first 'proper' job after my studies, something which not many students can say.  The experience I gained from my placement was not only academic and professional but also personal. I have gained a lot of confidence throughout my placement and also I proved to myself that I am an able and capable person that can rise to the occasion.

I am very thankful to have worked at the research unit and to have completed my time there with such ease and I am indebted to everyone there for helping me learn so much and develop myself on both a knowledge and personal level.

Mind the Gap: Putting research into practice

It is nearly time for the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) Conference 2014. Titled: Mind the Gap: Putting research into practice, the conference has a number of aims for attending therapists:

• Improve their services to users

  

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• Inform and enhance their clinical practice with the most current and robust evidence
• Apply understanding of the emerging commissioning and provision environment to identify opportunities for service development
• Understand how work around the development of outcome measures and the evidence base is essential to supporting the effective commissioning and provision of services
• Discuss ways of developing the existing evidence base to support commissioning and provision of needs 
• Develop a business case based on existing evidence-based practice and in the context of financial pressures and the changing national and local priorities
• Share emerging innovations and approaches to client management and service delivery
• Develop a business case for innovative and emerging practice that informs service redesign
• Develop the business case for new models of employment
• Inform, appraise and share knowledge of the evidence base – in order to apply to their own practice and disseminate wider
• Develop their roles as advocates for their clients and families, and the wider profession
• Identify new partnerships and collaborations and enhanced ways of working with others to meet the needs of our service users

As part of this event Prof Sue Roulstone will be leading a team facilitating a workshop: 'Understanding the evidence for speech and language therapy interventions for preschool children with speech and language impairment'.  

By attending this workshop, delegates will:

• Understand the relevance of the ‘Child Talk’ framework for their own practice
• Have knowledge of the evidence base of key components of intervention for preschool children with primary speech and language impairment
• Have an awareness of the perspectives of parents and children about typical interventions
• Be able to identify assessments and outcomes related to key therapy components

So if you want to find out more about the 'Child Talk' framework, and evidence based practice, consider attending this conference. It is taking place on 17-18 September 2014, at the University of Leeds (Leeds, LS2 9JT).  Booking Costs and forms can be found at the conference website: http://www.rcslt.org/news/events/2014/rcslt_conference_2014