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.