Scary, good but scary

So its been an exciting week. Scary, but good scary as one of my lecturers always says.

A couple of weeks ago we had a health promotion placement, and I was based with two peers at a CAMHS team, speaking to non-SLT colleagues to find out what they knew about communication difficulties in those with mental health difficulties, and what they'd like to know. We then created a training resource to leave with the team.

It was a brilliant week, our placement educators were stars, and gave us such good learning opportunities. I was able to focus in on neurodivergence and learnt so much about the experience of neurodivergent people and autistic communication styles. It felt a really key learning point for me (and others) that we may need to adapt our use of language but also how we receive language - an autistic person may appear rude or blunt when actually they are using their communication strengths of directness and monofocus. Emily Lees website was particularly useful in my learning - thank you Emily - https://www.autisticslt.com/ - and I highly recommend having a look at her website.

On Monday this week I had offered to present at a clinical excellence network of SLTs working in SEMH. Leading up to it I was so nervous - what did I know that qualified SLTs didn't already? Who was I, a student, to 'teach' them?

Thankfully the presentation went well, and they were very gracious. Through email contact with my lecturer and twitter contact with an attendee I was reminded that although I was only a student I'd been given dedicated time to do something qualified SLTs don't always have time to - look at the research. They probably knew much of what I had to say, but being able to give some statistics and references for them to use themselves and with colleagues seems to have been well received. There is a massive overlap of mental health difficulties and communication difficulties, and it has been a privilege to help raise awareness and support the work of SLTs in this area.