International Women's Day

Being in a profession consisting of more women than men, I felt inspired to write a post on International Women’s Day. I don’t know why it is that there are more women than men train for Speech and Language Therapy but it’s definitely a profession with more females! (But I do know some brilliant male SLTs too!)

I work, and have worked with, many inspirational Speech and Language Therapists who are dedicated to making a difference to the lives of the people they work with. Whether it’s helping children to say their first words, use their speech sounds correctly or to make more sense of the world around them… and that’s just the children we’ve seen before lunch!

There are so many women who have inspired me throughout my entire life, before and during my career as a Speech and Language Therapist - and men too but today is International Women’s day so we don’t need to talk about the men today! ;)  

 

I love quotes and I have many favourites. My love of quotes also reminds me how important language is to be able to understand others and express ourselves and to find our place in the world. I feel so privileged to be part of a profession that offers support and intervention to people struggling to develop effective communication skills (or regain these skills if they’ve been lost).

I thought I’d share some of my favourite quotes (so hard to choose only a few!)

-          If you think you are too small to make an impact, try sleeping with a mosquito in the room – Dame Anita Roddick (I love this one and use it whenever I am talking to people about campaigning)

-          The question isn’t who’s going to let me. It’s who’s going to stop me – Ayn Rand

-          No one can make you feel inferior without your consent – Eleanor Roosevelt

-          If you don’t like something change it, if you can’t change it, change your attitude – Maya Angelou

-          Anything is possible if you’ve got enough nerve – J.K.Rowling

Some of the most inspirational women in my life are those the closest to me. My mam, my sister and my grandma have all played a huge role in my life. My grandma always used to say ‘You’ve got to laugh or else you’ll cry’ and this gets me through many situations (sometimes daily!) I know I am a better person because she was in my life. All of my family (and friends) are so supportive of me and everything I do and I feel so blessed each and every day.

My sister Joanne, mam and grandma with a cool little Julie!

 

Thanks for reading. Be proud of who you are <3

Speech and Language Therapy Transforms Lives!

 

Laughter in Leeds

On Friday 11^th December we hosted the Leeds Voice Box final at Parklands Primary School. It went really well and I was so proud to have been part of it. Three schools competed for the Leeds title and all the children told great jokes. The two visiting schools brought their schools winner and runner up and we show cased a few of our runners up from our November competition. Chris Dyson, Head Teacher, gave a very warm welcome to our visiting schools and started the afternoon off brilliantly.

It was our delight to welcome Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East to join our judging panel once again (this time after spending the whole afternoon with the school council). He was joined by Janet Addison, Head of Speech and Language Therapy and CAHMS (Leeds Community Healthcare) and Maureen Carr (who was invited following lots of generous donations of Christmas gifts to the school).

Tilly and Tom also joined in the afternoon by sitting with the judging panel, looking very festive in their Christmas jumpers. They enjoyed listening to the jokes and meeting the judges (and posing for a few photos too!)

The judging panel with Tilly and Tom

During the build up to the big day I decided it would nice if each of the finalists had a trophy so I ordered two more and kept my fingers (and toes!) crossed that they would arrive in time. On the Friday morning I received an email stating that the trophies would arrive between 14.26 and 15.26 that day! Voice Box was taking place 2-3pm so I asked the lady in the office to alert me if they arrived while we were still in the hall.  Half way through the show I saw her waving at me from outside the hall with two trophies in hand! I was so excited and quickly left the hall to get them from her.

One of the winners trophies

I was delighted that we were able to give each of the winners a trophy for making it to the Leeds final. Following the jokes from all of the children, the judging panel deliberated the important decision of overall Leeds winner while we listened to Year 4 sing Mamma Mia.

Richard Burgon made an inspirational speech and talked passionately about Leeds, the people living there and Parklands Primary School. He also announced that after spending the afternoon with the school council that he would like to invite them to visit the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. He also took the time to write to each of the 41 children from the November Parklands Voice Box competition. Richard then announced the winner, as decided by the judging panel. While he was talking each of three finalists were sat on the stage, fingers crossed, looking very hopeful they would be the lucky winner. I felt so proud of our team effort to make the afternoon so enjoyable for everyone, and was glad that each of the 3 children would leave with a trophy. Richard announced the winner and then presented each of the three finalists with a trophy, followed by the runners up with a medal.

One of the letters from Richard Burgon

Our year 5 Parklands winner, won the Leeds title with his brilliant joke about Princess Potatoes. Each of the winners from the three schools have been individually entered into the national competition and we look forward to hearing whether we have been shortlisted for the Westminster final.

I have received lots of positive feedback from the schools that took part and those who attended the Voice Box final. One of my SLT colleagues from one of the other schools said that their 2 girls were buzzing all the way home and their winner was telling everyone who would listen than she came second and showing them her trophy.

I have thoroughly enjoyed being involved in Voice Box, from the lunch time joke clubs, joke workshops, rehearsals and live performances. It has  also been a fantastic opportunity to work even more closely with the schools fabulous SENCO (Laura) and Head Teacher (Chris), both of whom worked tirelessly to ensure Voice Box ran smoothly. It has also been great to get other schools involved and have the support of the local MP.

I am changing my NHS role in Leeds from January so I will no longer be working in Parklands Primary School. It has been a fantastic project to be involved in during my last term there and I hope that there will be opportunity to visit them again soon! I also hope that there will be opportunity to get schools involved in Voice Box again next time round!

Chris Dyson (Head Teacher), me, Tilly, Maureen

I can’t believe we are almost at the end of another year. It’s been another busy one and I’ve loved every minute! I started the year on a temporary NHS contract and am delighted that I am ending the year on a permanent contract – looks like I will be in Leeds longer than planned after all.

I enjoyed talking at the RCSLT Webinar on Political Engagement in July and then building on this further by developing links with the Leeds East MP through Voice Box. I have put feelers out in my team about us raising awareness of Giving Voice and SLT and we will be following this up in the New Year.

I am looking forward to seeing what 2016 will bring and wish you all lots of health and happiness for the New Year.  

Thank you for reading – see you in 2016!

Tilly and Tom

Just a quick update tonight...I'm so busy and time is flying by! Planning for Voice Box is well underway and the children have already started thinking of jokes. I’m also planning some activities for our No Pens Day later this month. It was National No Pens Day Wednesday yesterday but we have decided to do it on the last day of this half term. It’s all very exciting and I can’t wait to write more but for now I am going to tell you about my latest project.

Last weekend when I went home to Northumberland these two beautiful children were there to greet me.

 

They moved to Leeds with me on Sunday and have already settled in nicely.

 

They started school on Tuesday and already they feel like family! The children in school absolutely love them (as do the adults!). Tilly even got her very own school uniform yesterday and quickly gave up her dummy (as she’s much too old for one now!)

Gosh...don't they grow up quickly!

 

I have set up a Facebook page to share their story and to use it as a way of raising awareness of Speech and Language Therapy in a fun way. I am hoping they might even have some jokes of their own for Voice Box ;)

Find Tilly and Tom on Facebook and Twitter and follow their story. Please do interact with them - I just know that they will love to hear from you! J

 

It's Twitter time!

Welcome to my 60th post...I’m excited to see that my blog is rapidly approaching 10,000 page views! At the beginning of the year this was just over 2000 page views, so to be almost at 10,000 views is incredible! Thank you to everyone who reads it.

When I’m on twitter I often have a little look to see which celebrities are online, to tweet them my blog. Last week I tweeted it to Chico and Gary Barlow with the hope that one, or both of them might retweet it to their followers. I was very excited to find that Chico did just that (he has more than 30,000 followers!)  and he now follows me too! :-)



Retweet of my blog by Chico
#pma = positive mental attitude



Gary Barlow did not retweet my blog, but he did retweet Becky Beaumont’s. Becky is a 22 year old stroke survivor who blogs about her experiences. It is truly inspirational, and just goes to show that stroke can affect anyone at anytime in their life. Gary Barlow has more than 2 million (!) followers and it’s brilliant that he retweeted Becky’s blog to so many people! Check out Becky’s inspirational blog here - http://luckygirlbec.blogspot.co.uk/

Becky did not need a Speech and Language Therapist for her swallowing or communication needs following her stroke, however many people who have a stroke do need the specialist support of an SLT.  As you may know, the North East Trust for Aphasia offer long term support for people who have communication difficulties following a stroke (or other brain injury). Last week I got an email from NETA asking if I’d like to go along to promote Giving Voice at an event they are hosting this Saturday in Newcastle. Always welcoming of Giving Voice opportunities, I have agreed to go along with some leaflets, and to make a short speech at some point during the night :-) Event details can be found here. I’ll update my blog following the event!

Sunshine, Stammering and Giving Voice

What a lovely Sunny Sunday it is today! I feel like Spring is finally on it's way; I love this time of year!

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been liaising with the Front of House Manager at the Theatre Royal Newcastle, about Giving Voice at The King’s Speech (which opens tomorrow).

I’m delighted that they have agreed to hand out Giving Voice flyers with their programmes and are allowing 2 volunteers to be present before the show begins to hand out leaflets/answer questions about Speech and Language Therapy.

I had a large number of volunteers who wanted to help out with this which is fantastic. I’ve managed to include them all in the rota for the performances (Monday-Friday) and I look forward to hearing back how it goes.

Organising this, took a little more planning and preparation than I expected it to, but I am thrilled with the response from the theatre. Hopefully, we will be able to make lots more people aware of Giving Voice, SLT and stammering this week! I believe this is a popular show and most performances are sold out, therefore the audience is potentially quite large! How exciting!!

I’m going to watch The King’s Speech tomorrow evening and I’m really looking forward to it. I look forward to reporting back how it goes!

Spreading the word one person at a time...

“Speech and Language Therapy?? That’s a strange thing to study at uni….I guess there isn’t much need for it or many places to look for work…”

This was part of a conversation I had whilst at work this morning. I won’t say who said it as I honestly don’t think he meant any harm by it, he just obviously, like many other people, doesn’t understand the value of Speech and Language Therapy.

It made me feel a little disappointed and frustrated that the profession is still so misunderstood, however I’ve encountered this enough times now not to be surprised. I’m sure he wouldn’t think it was a strange thing to study if he knew someone who needed the specialist support of a Speech and Language Therapist.

He asked what made me choose Speech and Language Therapy so I took the opportunity to tell him a bit about the profession and how I want to help people communicate as everyone has the right to a voice.

It has actually led to more than one conversation, today, about the profession and my search for a job. He commented that he thought it was a 'bizarre' thing to study but after I explained about the variety of work we do and how fascinating I found the course, he agreed that it does sound quite interesting. I found myself quoting some key facts (such as ‘Speech and Language Therapy saves £765 million per year’, ‘one in three stroke survivors have speech, language or communication needs’) and he found these quite interesting, so it's worth memorising a few of these in case someone asks more about the profession :-). He seemed surprised there was such a need for speech and language therapy and was even more interested once I started with the key facts! Spreading the word one person at a time!

It was lovely to see so many people involved the Mass Tweet (#GivingVoiceUK) on Tuesday from 8pm. I think this was a great idea (thank you to Helen - Facebook admin of Support Giving Voice Campaign – Stop Speech and Language Therapy Cuts). Hopefully it helped to spread the word a little further.  I don’t know if we got #GivingVoiceUK trending but lots of people got involved – it’s not too late to start tweeting if you don’t already! I didn’t think I’d ever be able to understand Twitter and only properly started using it last year, despite having had an account for almost 3 years. I have actually surprised myself and found it’s not as complicated as I first though and I also quite enjoy it now! (so don’t use ‘it’s too complicated’ as an excuse until you’ve given it a proper chance! :-)

I came across the following picture through facebook and twitter and thought I’d share it here. Thanks to Claire Johnston for creating and sharing it! :-)