By Eleanor Harris
Magic Words Director & Specialist Speech and Language Therapist
2021 has been a year of tentative recovery for the nation with people emerging from the lockdowns to begin to enjoy an almost ‘normal’ life again.
Speech, language and communication needs did not disappear, or stop, during the lockdowns. With the hugely increased pressure on the NHS system, including Speech and Language Therapy, demand for the skills and knowledge of the Speech and Language Therapists within our service has never been stronger and shows no signs of dropping.
We are so very proud of our team, delivering excellent care and guidance for people of all ages with SLCN over 2021 with resolve and fortitude despite the often-challenging circumstances. Our therapists have been working flat out to ensure that as many people are seen as possible for badly needed speech and language therapy input. They are exhausted, but looking forward to a well deserved break over the Christmas period!
Our therapists have helped an additional 883 children, young people and adults with speech, language and communication difficulties such as Selective Mutism, Aphasia (speech and language difficulties post-stroke), Autism Spectrum Condition and Developmental Language Disorder among many, many other conditions. Along with the exceptionally hard work put in by all of our clients, the input from our therapists has achieved lots of positive and effective outcomes for our service users over 2021, leading to better communication and better mental health for 2022!
We have welcomed 15 new therapists into the Magic Words family over 2021, and promoted 3 more of our therapists into management positions to create a strong leadership team. Our team is all the richer for this and the support and camaraderie among the team is lovely to see.
Our new permanent clinic bases in Cambridge, St Albans and London Archway were set up and opened, our new counselling service with fully qualified and supervised counsellors was set up and ‘went live’, and we donated books and resources to accompany the books to schools in need. We also received training on setting up research projects to add to the evidence base for speech and language therapy with Essex University.
Phew!
We are going to build on all we have learned during 2021 to create an even better 2022. We are looking forward to developing our Autism Service, ‘Empower Autism’ and to opening up access to quality therapy for even more people at our new permanent clinic bases in Cambridge, St Albans and London Archway. We have a fantastic schedule of continuing professional development courses for our team to look forward to, managed by the wonderful Kate Eden, which will continue to grow the outstanding levels of skills and knowledge we require of our team. We will be designing and carrying out research projects and we look forward to continued work with Essex University. We will also be implementing our own new bespoke system of outcome measures designed and managed by the wonderful Katie Wilkins.
We do all this for our clients and we know that a happy, motivated and skilled up team ultimately means better outcomes for communication and mental health for our service users.
So we want to say a huge thank you to every single team member, and every single client, for making 2021 a good year despite all of the adversity. Here’s to 2022!
