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

  

  RCSLT Logo

• 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

Double Graduation

On Monday 21st July the Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit was very proud to see two of our affiliated researchers; Dr Rena Lyons & Dr Helen Hambly graduated from the University of the West of England.

Left to Right: Dr Helen Hambly, Dr Rena Lyons and Professor Sue Roulstone

Both Rena and Helen were supervised by Professor Sue Roulstone. All three are pictures above following their ceremony at Bristol Cathedral.

Rena's PhD was titled: Identity and meaning-making in children with primary speech/language impairments, and Helen's: Children’s, parents’, peers’ and professionals’experiences of language impairment: A multi-perspective study to identify psychosocial goals for intervention.

Child Health Research from the University of the West of England

On July 11^th Anna Blackwell represented the Bristol Speech and Language Research Unit at a local (Bristol) event which was conceived to engage the public with the research and knowledge exchange activities of the University of the West of England' Child Health Researchers.

Brasserie Blanc as people started to arrive.

The event was set at Brasserie Blanc and cream teas were provided for everyone to partake of.  Interesting conversations were had with all the attendees, with some of the members of public offering challenging interpretations of research findings and inspiring furutre research questions.

Hopefully this is the first of many future events.  If you want to follow UWE's child health research the their twitter name is @CHCR_UWE

Interesting conversations being had round the room

Raising Awareness: A video for speech, language and communication needs

Vikki Greenhalgh spent some time working with us at BSLTRU (http://bsltru.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/bsltru-helping-students-become-evidence.html), and has now been part of the team of speech and language therapy students that spent an incredible day with children from Dawn House ICAN school.

This video is an outcome from that meeting and allows teenagers with communication difficulties to provide insight into what they find difficult when communicating and how people can help them. 

Well done all involved!

A CleftCollective study needs parents of 12 month old babies born with cleft palate to test process for recording speech at home.

Dr Yvonne Wren is looking for families who can help her pilot the collection of speech samples for the Cleft Collective study.

Families who want to participate will be given a recording device for their baby to wear in customised clothing for one day. The recording device will record all the speech used by the baby and sounds heard in their environment. Dr Wren is interested to know what this experience is like for families and any problems that they encounter.

If you would like to know more about this pilot study and have a baby born with a cleft palate who will be aged 11 to 12 months between July and August 2014, please contact Yvonne at Yvonne.wren@speechtherapy.org.uk or 0117 340 6529

Congratulations to Sam Harding

One of the units research assistants 'Sam Harding' was awarded 'Best Oral Presentation' at the University of the West of England's Faculty for Health and Applied Science Postgraduate Research Conference on Friday 27th June.

Sam presented on her work looking at the impact of treatment for head and neck cancer on post traumatic growth.

The brief for the conference was to present the work to an 'educated lay' audience. A challenge for all academic who are more use to talking to people who are already familiar with the area of research.

Sam said that 'Communicating complex issues clearly is a very important skill that all researchers need to obtain and practice. Hopefully this award shows I am moving in the right direction'.

Dr Yvonne Wren presents at the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association annual conference

From right to left: Prof Sharynne McLeod, Ms Sarah Masso & Dr Yvonne Wren

This month Dr Yvonne Wren attended the 15th International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association (ICPLA) conference in Stockholm, Sweden.  While there she presented data from her research on Speech Characteristics of 5 year olds and Babbling in Infants.  

Whilst in Stockholm at ICPLA, Dr Wren joined colleagues Prof Sharynne Mcleod and Sarah Masso from Charles Sturt University, New South Wales, Australia. This provided the opportunity to discuss data from the Sound Start study which is currently running in Sydney. The Sound Start study will evaluate the impact of using software to help children with speech sound disorders. The software, Phoneme Factory Sound Sorter, was developed at the Bristol Speech & Language therapy Research Unit.