Assistants roles in East Lancashire

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Assistants roles in East Lancashire

• By Sharon Westhead
• and Debbie Banks

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Sharon Westhead

• Works 3 days a week. Band 4 SLTA
• 4 years in post
• Former Primary School Teacher
• 2 mornings in a SERF (Special Educational
  Resource Facility)
• Mainstream schools
• Training
• Demonstrations
• Resources

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Debbie Banks

• Works full-time. Band 3 SLTA
• 8 months in post
• BSc Hons Human Communication Sciences
• Clinic, Mainstream and Special schools
• Drop-Ins
• 11 Therapy sessions
• Group Therapy sessions
• Demonstrations
• Resources

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Other SLTA staff
Adult Team
Childrens Team
Julie Ingham
Claire Gurman
Fozia Habib Bilingual Support (Urdu/Punjabi)
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Where do we work?

• We work on Floor 5 of the St. Peters Primary
  Health Care Centre in Burnley.
• We moved into the building 18 months ago.
• It has excellent facilities with clinic rooms and
  training rooms.
• As a consequence of this we have been able to
  rapidly expand the courses and training we offer.

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Drop-In

• Who is it for?
• What is it?
• An opportunity for parents to talk to a Speech
  and Language Therapist without having to go on a
  waiting list or make an appointment.

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11 Therapy

• Model strategies and activities to Educational
  Staff - TAs/Class Teachers and to parents.
• Adapt therapy to meet individual needs.

Child likes Doctor Who
Doctor Who Board Game

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Group Therapy

• Talking Together
• Observe and assess verbal and non-verbal aspects
  of communication of pre-school children through
  structured circle time activities and play.

• Activities are designed to encourage a range of
  skills including
• Attention and listening
• Turn-taking
• Eye-contact
• Verbal expression

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• Early Sound Listening

• /S/ Articulation

Fronting/Stopping
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How my role has developed since 2004

• When I first started..
• I worked with individual children and not groups.
• Therapists explained in detail the programme
  targets and modelled the strategies they wanted
  me to use.
• I followed the childs programme carefully and
  only used the resources suggested by the
  therapist.
• I liaised regularly with the therapist to ensure
  I was doing things correctly.
• I didnt ask Teaching Assistants to sit in on the
  sessions.

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And now

• I still work with individual children and
  initially meet with the therapist to discuss a
  new child but after that I work more
  independently.
• The emphasis is more on training school staff.
• I take the childs programme and resources into
  school and model strategies to teaching
  assistants and parents for them to practise with
  the child. This could be one visit or several
  depending on the targets.
• I liaise with the school and take in further
  resources if needed.
• I also work with small groups of children.

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SERF - Special Educational Resource Facility

• I work here 2 mornings each week.
• 10 place unit within a mainstream school for
  children with Specific Language Impairments
  (SLI).
• The children can attend for 3 years whilst in Key
  Stage 1.
• I work alongside a teacher, a nursery nurse and a
  Speech and Language Therapist.
• The children have access to speech and language
  therapy sessions 3 or 4 times a week.
• They are also integrated into mainstream classes
  for some of the day.

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Group Therapy
11 Therapy
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Haslingden Primary School

• Have a teaching assistant overseeing the speech
  and language caseload (about 18 children).
• She runs a variety of groups, including Time to
  Talk, vocabulary groups, speech sounds groups,
  social communication groups and a narrative
  group.
• I liaise with her and provide support, resources
  and training as and when needed.

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Training in schools

• Time to Talk by Alison Schroeder
• Time to Talk is a programme to develop oral and
  social interaction skills to children aged 4-6.
  There are 40 sessions designed to help children
  develop the rules of interaction with the help of
  Ginger Bear who features in all the activities.

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Ginger Bear on holiday!!

• Ginger Bear is now such a valued member of the
  SLT team that earlier this year he got to go on
  holiday with some of the therapists!

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Narrative Therapy Training

• Based on the work of Judith Carey, Becky Shanks
  Helen Rippon.

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What else do we do?

• SLTA termly meetings.
• Organise and develop resources.
• Assist SLT assessment and carry out formal
  assessments.
• Record information in patient case notes and
  carry out administrative duties relating to
  patient care, e.g. writing letters/making
  telephone calls.
• Contribute ideas and discussion to meetings,
  taking minutes when required.
• Input into clinical governance groups such as
  risk or patient focus.

• Help run training courses for
• parents, teachers and teaching
• assistants.

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What we find rewarding
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THE END