By Catherine Clancy, Speech and Language Therapist
Week 3.
29.07.19: On Monday I spent the day at Russia working with the team to complete a triage. This is to support the management of new referrals who are seeking support for their child. Here, I completed case history questionnaires to find out the child’s strengths and difficulties, and as a team we discussed how to prioritise the new referrals seen. There are many people seeking support from Yellow House which can unfortunately mean long waiting times for clients to be seen. However, the triage gave us the opportunity to meet face-to-face with families and offer advice.
01.08.19: It’s August already! On Thursday I continue to see clients for their weekly therapy sessions. Above are some of the resources I made with the team to help children express their wants/needs and interests if they are finding spoken language difficult. When lunch time came around I thought I would try something new and ordered the local vegetables with chapati and beans – YUM!
30.07.19: On this day I continued to see clients for their weekly therapy sessions. The picture above shows a mother supporting her child through parent-child interaction strategies that aim to promote language development. The mother was focusing on following her child’s lead and using 1-2 key words to comment on her play. Videoing was used as a therapeutic tool to empower the mother to continue using those strategies that she used positively to support her child.
31.07.19: How was it Wednesday already?! (the weeks fly by!). I travelled to the EARC centre and continued seeing clients for their weekly therapy sessions. The photographs above show parents interacting with their children and supporting the use of low-tech augmentative communication. For these children, they were unable to communicate successfully using only speech and therefore a total communication approach has been adopted where we are using speech, gestures, key signs and a communication board to help them express their wants/needs/interests etc. Parental education is fundamental to the success of therapy as parents have to feel invested and motivated to use the strategies advised by us in order for therapy to have positive outcomes. Fortunately, both parents are open to learning to ways to communicate with their children and they are now aware that the belief ‘signing/pictures with stop my child from talking’ is only a myth!!
This week has been empowering and also eye-opening. It has been lovely to see parents and families so invested in supporting their children as ultimately, they are the experts on their child and have the opportunity to make the biggest impact - I have found videoing a great way of supporting this! However, the policies and procedures within the care system are very different to those we experience in the U.K. and it has required me to adapt a very flexible way of working to continue supporting children with the limited access to resources and early interventions.
