3rd October 2024

Royal College chief executive praises the ‘passion’ of Your Healthcare’s speech and language therapists

Steve Jamieson, chief executive of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, praised the ‘passion’ of Your Healthcare’s speech and language teams, during a visit to see first-hand the impact of speech and language therapy in the community.

“What I felt coming into this organisation today was the passion of people,” Steve commented. “Everybody we’ve met is really passionate both about the profession and the organisation. It’s really important to walk into an organisation and to be able to feel that.”

Steve Jamieson spent the day with Your Healthcare’s children’s, adult and neurodevelopmental teams, and met service users at a local school and on site.

“It’s amazing to see what you do, great to see the services going so well and considering the staff numbers, your impact is incredible,” he commented.

Steve was welcomed to Your Healthcare by Carmel Brady, lead for children’s speech and language therapy, who arranged the visit. Managing director Ed Montgomery and Karen Long, frontline services lead, gave a presentation about Your Healthcare, including the benefits of being a membership organisation, like the Royal College.

The three speech and language teams then gave an overview of their priorities, objectives and challenges, focusing on the very real impact that speech and language therapy can have, from supporting small babies experiencing difficulties with drinking, swallowing and early play and communication, through to adults recovering from stroke and people with learning disabilities at risk from dysphagia (difficulties swallowing).

Bedelsford School in Kingston then hosted the RCSLT team. Commenting, Jess Webb, assistant head teacher, said: ““Speech and language therapy makes a vital contribution to the lives of the Bedelsford pupils, all of whom have special educational needs. The close working relationship we have developed over the years with Your Healthcare enables us to provide a high quality, tailored service to the children in our school, and we see the positive impact this has on a daily basis. It was a pleasure to meet Steve Jamieson and show him children’s speech and language therapy in practice and how we work together with the SALT team to integrate therapies into our provision.”

Returning to Your Healthcare, Steve Jamieson then met a group of service users who are supported by the learning disability team. During a lively discussion and exchange of views, the group accepted an invitation to visit Steve Jamieson at the Royal College’s headquarters in central London.

Commenting on the day, Carmel Brady said: “We were proud and delighted to welcome Steve to Your Healthcare. It was a pleasure to share our work with him and hear about the Royal College’s ongoing plans. One thing on which we were all agreed was the very real need to improve understanding of speech and language therapy among other professions and with the general public. It’s such a rewarding career and one which offers great opportunity and scope for personal development.”

Steve Jamieson thanked Carmel Brady for arranging the visit, and invited Your Healthcare’s speech and language therapists to become actively involved in the Royal College’s future plans.