AHPs Day: Tracy Robson, speech and language therapist
Issued by NHS Highland
Allied Health Professionals play a vital role in the delivery of high quality, patient-centred health and social care across NHS Highland. In a series of articles around AHPs Day (15th October 2018) this week we hope to highlight and celebrate the contribution of these amazing professions to the NHS and the wider healthcare sector:
Allied Health Professionals is a term used to describe the broad range of professionals in the health sector who are not doctors, dentists or nurses. Allied health professionals aim to prevent, diagnose and treat a range of conditions and illnesses and often work within a multidisciplinary health team to provide the best patient outcomes.
There are 15 AHP roles: art therapists, drama therapists, music therapists, chiropodists/podiatrists, dietitians, occupational therapists, operating department practitioners, orthoptists, osteopaths, paramedics, physiotherapists, prosthetists and orthotists, radiographers and speech and language therapists.
Like many AHPs Tracy Robson has several roles within her post, but primarily her role is to identify and support children and young people with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN).
Tracy, who works for the Highland Council’s Children’s Services, said: “My role is to fully assess the needs of the child or young person and to then provide support, advice, targeted therapy or to facilitate others to help ensure that a child’s communication needs are met and supported.
“I might be working with parents and staff to support speech disorders affecting how a child’s speech sounds develop, language delays and/or disorders affecting language development learning and understanding of words, for instance, stammering, voice problems and more!
“I am also part of the Practice Educator Group ensuring our service is a positive place for SLT students to come and study and have service improvement developments to deliver.
Tracy, who is based in Inverness, said that empathy is something she feels is essential in any therapeutic relationship; with the children and families she works with and between professionals, so that all can truly put themselves in the shoes of those who cannot speak for themselves. So acting as advocates and facilitating change in others in order to benefit those with communication needs.
Talking about her career to date, she said: “I started my career in Ayrshire working with adults and young people in a rural setting and since then all my jobs have involved a remote and rural component which I love. I then moved to Stirling and worked with the preschool language disorder service and was lucky enough to work two days a week in Polmont Young Offenders for several years before moving to the Highlands.
“I am most proud of being part of a wider Highland SLT team which is positive and innovative in trying to provide the best outcomes for all children across the Highlands and those with SLCNs.
“My hours are generally 9 to 5, but I often work outside of those hours as needs arise, fitting around the needs of the families we work with, providing training and in travelling long distances. That said, I have a dog and so I’m out with her every morning before work at 6:00am and once a week I swim with a club at 7:00am.
Day-to-day operation priorities generally involve a range of duties involving seeing children and young people and those who support them in schools, clinics or homes and ensuring that I see them in a timely manner.
She said: “We complete first conversations with any new requests for our service ensuring we are seeing people at the right time for them, providing advice and reassurance and prioritising who needs to be seen and when.
“I deliver training and support SLT student placements and there’s always paperwork to complete.”
Tracy said her biggest achievement to date as an SLT has been being able to deliver regular Talking Mats training across the Highlands to a wide range of both child and adult services.
She said: “It has ensured that all services working with those with communication needs think about seeking their views about a range of things in their life, including them in their day to day life decisions and being able to talk about things that they would find hard without this tool.
“We recently developed a leaflet distributed across the Highlands encouraging all services to use different ways to facilitate seeking the views of children and young people coinciding with The Year of Young People 2018.”
Normal daily challenges for Tracy mainly involve time management and planning in order to get to the children and families that need help most. She said there’s the relevant paperwork that needs to be completed, and juggling her other roles to provide an effective service delivery across the areas she work in is always hard work too.
So organising and prioritising her workload is important.
Tracy said: “I rely heavily on our admin staff and also our SLT Support Practitioners to support our role. I try to get back to families and to return calls and queries promptly and to write reports and recommendations in a timely manner.”
She emphasised that feedback about the service from the public was important and crucial to moving forward with and including families and other services.
She said: “My recent secondment working with the hearing impairment team means that I will be learning a new language (British Sign Language) which is an exciting and fascinating language to watch and learn.”
And to people thinking of taking up a career in SLT, she said: “The people we meet and work with, their individual needs and scope of our profession is as varied as it gets, so there is something for everyone who sees communication as a vital component of being human. You’ll never be bored! It’s vibrant, active, different every day and although it’s hard work there’s much reward and successes in between the challenges we face, it’s a great profession!”