Blog

December 2018 marked the 12 month anniversary of me selling my company and was the beginning of my 2 months sick leave (my first ever episode of sickness in my whole career). It’s safe to say that 12 months ago tomorrow I was at an all time low and knew that A LOT had...

Having spent almost a decade with my previous company my name and “the brand” are pretty much synonymous. I get a lot of questions from people I meet as to who now work for / with and why this changed this year so here goes with the simplest explanation... In...

Ever since my days in the NHS I, like many others, have gone above and beyond for the children I work with and their families. When you have a huge caseload quite simply this is impossible as, even with absolute flexibility, there are a finite number of hours in each...

I wrote and published my blog post on Recommending Direct Speech Therapy 2 days ago and have been knocked for six by the number of comments on my LinkedIn; Facebook page; Facebook groups I shared it in and on Instagram page. I have received zero negative comments...

When I was a junior SLT in the NHS I was always given the "tribunal families" i.e. the families that had spent an arm and a leg on independent reports and legal fees in order to access the appropriate placement (school) and therapy provision (SLT / OT / PT) for their...

To show my gratitude to the university where I trained to be a Speech & Language Therapist (Leeds Met, Leeds Beckett) each year the SLT department and I run a Clinical Innovation Award.  The 'criteria' we came up with were that the winning project will:  demonstrate a...

When a child is typically developing by the age of 3 they will be using 3-4+ word sentences to make requests; comment on interesting things they see; ask & answer questions and direct those around them.  In direct contrast the nonverbal child with Autism at 3 years...

Special Educational Needs Tribunal assessments of Education Healthcare Plan (EHCP) Tribunal assessments For the past 12 years I have been privileged to work for the NHS; Charities; Local Authorities and as a private speech & language therapist specialising in Autism. ...

I often get asked by parents what my approach is for children with Autism that do not communicate verbally and whilst there's most certainly not a 'one size fits all' approach I do have some particular approaches I embed into my SLT programmes.  In upcoming posts I'll...

I'm Chris and I'm daddy to Izzy (6); Tom (4); Osian (1) and husband to Nia. We're expecting our fourth (yes we're mad!) baby in January 2020 and so you could certainly say there isn't a quiet second in our house!! Nia and I co-own Wade Therapy Services under which...