University Speech and Language Therapy Clinic supports clients with Aphasia

Students and staff at Leeds Beckett University support clients with Aphasia at the university's Speech and Language Therapy Clinic which supports people who have difficulties with communication following strokes and other neurological conditions.

The clinic has two rooms which can be used to treat two clients at one time or one client with students observing via a central viewing window. It is based at the City Campus of the university and is staffed by experienced lecturers who support students to carry out work placements there. The clinic runs throughout the year and gives invaluable placement experience to students studying Speech and Language Therapy (SLT). It also provides research opportunities into therapies for people with speech, language, and communication difficulties.

Naomi de Graff, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences was involved in setting up the clinic: "It is wonderful to see the clinic in action, providing excellent student placements. We are working with colleagues in the NHS, independent practice and across other organisations, to support clients with their speech, language, and communication needs, in the best way possible. What an incredible experience for our SLT students to have at Leeds Beckett."

Lecturer Claire Dolby is the Practice Educator, supervising the students at the clinic and says there are two main aims: "I want to support our students and help them develop their clinical skills - to enable them to be absolutely fantastic Speech and Language Therapists to work in our NHS service. I also want to give clients a good quality care after their NHS journey has potentially ended and to support where they want to go with their goals."

John, who is from Knaresborough, has attended the SLT clinic following a stroke eleven years ago: "I was an IT consultant, and I had a stroke eleven years ago. It left me with Aphasia and a weak arm and leg. The clinic is good because it gets you to write and express yourself as you want and writing for me is hard and I want to do it better."

Sophie Padfield studied Speech and Language Therapy and worked at the clinic: "It's really good. I think you can learn so much academically, but I feel like you don';t actually understand it until you're putting it into practice and you're working hands-on with the clients. We're working with people on their writing skills, so we've established a writing group in the clinic so people with aphasia come in and we discuss their aims with them, set out what they want to do, and we've been using different technologies and software to work on these aims."

Katrina Lewis has also studied BSc Speech and Language Therapy degree. She says they help people relearn skills that others take for granted: "It is really nice to get some hands-on experience working directly with the clients. A lot of them have had strokes quite a while ago and they haven't received Speech and Language Therapy for quite a while, so they have new goals to what they had when they initially had their stroke and very functional goals of being able to write emails or get back to work and things like that."

Client John says the students are vital: "The students are very important because without the students, there'd be no SLTs of the future and they need SLTs for umpteen things and a SLT is a very important person."

Sarah James, Head of Speech and Language Therapy Sciences, says that launching the clinic was a long-held ambition for the team at Leeds Beckett: "The clinic is a fantastic opportunity to combine high-quality learning experiences for our students with providing speech and language therapy for people with communication difficulties in our region. On top of that, research taking place at the clinic will mean that we can contribute to our understanding of what therapy works best for different clients to help them reach their communication goals."

To find out more about studying Speech and Language Therapy please click here.