University teams up with NHS trust to open free city summer speech and language clinic

STUDENTS AND staff at Leeds Beckett University have teamed up with Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust (LCH) to deliver a free speech and language therapy clinic to children this summer.

Running for six weeks, 20 volunteer second and third year students on BSc (Hons) Speech and Language Therapy degree programmes are working alongside 13 NHS Speech and Language Therapy staff members and eight Speech and Language Therapy lecturers to help 60 children across the city.

The children and their parents are receiving blocks of three or four free sessions at the university.

The families were offered the chance to attend the clinic, offering them valuable help while reducing the waiting list for speech and language therapy services.

This agreed approach with LCH speech and language therapy complements LCH Summer Waiting List Initiative taking place across clinics and health centres in Leeds during school holidays.

Children attending the therapy sessions are receiving support with specific speech and language problems, autism, cerebral palsy and learning difficulties.

The students and staff have been helping the children with social interaction, vocabulary and sentence development, speech and sound work, through a variety of fun games.

Jo Sandiford, senior lecturer in Speech and Language Therapy at Leeds Beckett University, explained: “Before I joined Leeds Beckett in February this year, I worked for LCH and so was keen to set up a partnership between the two organisations”.

Sarah White, lecturer at Leeds Beckett and part-time speech and language therapist at LCH, continued: “The NHS has long waiting lists for speech and language therapy for children and we are aiming to establish a sustainable clinic here at the university to run on a regular basis. This summer clinic is a pilot project and, if it evaluates well, we hope to make it a permanent clinic”.

The clinic is based at Leeds Beckett’s city-centre campus where six clinical rooms are available. Funding received from School of Social Sciences allowed the clinic to buy toys, equipment and resources.