Giving Voice // Speech & Language Therapy

GIVING VOICE // SPEECH & LANGUAGE THERAPY

Considering how I've been blogging on and off for a number of years now, it actually amazes me how I haven't once thought to dedicate a post to the degree I am studying and future profession I am hoping to join. It was only the other day, after a lecture we had about the Giving Voice campaign (more on that in a mo!), when it occurred to me that it might actually be a good idea. And so voilà, long over due post, here we are. Let us crack on. So in case you didn't already know, I am currently in my second year of a Speech & Language Therapy degree at the University of Manchester. I decided to choose the degree after struggling to find my calling throughout GCSE and A Level. I wanted to be too many things. I had too many interests. I wanted to learn everything I possibly could. I wanted a challenge and to unlock my potential, alongside putting the best parts of my character and interests to good use. Too many things mattered to me, and I didn't know how to tie them all together, or if that was even possible to begin with. Turns out, after a lot of soul searching and a rollercoaster ride of discovery, that Speech & Language Therapy was the answer. I wouldn't have even discovered it in the first place, if it wasn't for my Ma's excessive Googling to help me narrow down my future career choices. Thanks Ma. I owe you one.

So what is Speech & Language Therapy? Well it won't come as much of a surprise if I told you that not a lot of people know. You may even be one of them. I certainly was before I became interested in this course. For most people, knowledge of the profession only stems from their own work in healthcare or education services, or personal experience, whether that be themselves, loved ones or friends receiving therapy. For a select few it might also be through some kind of media exposure. However if none of those criteria apply to you, chances are you probably won't have come across Speech & Language Therapy before. In some respects, I guess it's likely to be because you've never needed to, which is great, but on the converse, a surprisingly large amount of people worldwide access, or are waiting to access, Speech & Language Therapy services every day. A fairly new profession, as opposed to say medicine or psychology, Speech & Language Therapy is a very present and incredibly important feature in the healthcare setting, yet a bit like the dark horse or underdog, it often goes unnoticed and undervalued, considering the immense benefits it provides. Trying to label Speech & Language Therapy, or SLT, and put it into one defining box, is rather hard, as there's an awful lot more to it than most people think, even for us students who've signed up to study the course. It's like a rainbow with so many different shades and tones of colour, that contribute to form the overall arching structure. However to put it as simply as possible, SLT is all about the different elements that help us communicate with one another, whether that be our speech, our voice, our language, our body language, and how to put these things right, if for some reason they go wrong. And additionally to that, we also know all about how swallowing works, and how to help fix it if it goes wrong too. Pretty cool.

When training to be a Speech & Language Therapist, you have to learn a lot of information from a variety of different disciplines, including the anatomy and physiology of the head and neck, down to the lungs. How you physically produce your voice. How you shape your voice with your mouth, to make speech. All the different sounds a human can possibly make. How those sounds are used to make up a language. How language works. How it links to writing and spelling and reading. How language is used in different cultures, countries and social aspects. How hearing works. How you process speech and sounds that you hear. How you eat and drink. How all these things change and develop as you grow older. How they differ according to whether you're a boy or a girl. How you even learn speech and language in the first place. How the brain is the control centre that looks after the whole thing.  How important it is to be able to communicate.You then learn about how all these things can go wrong, why they go wrong, what happens when they go wrong, and what you can do to help make it better. And there's a lot of different ways that things can go wrong, whether it be from birth, in which case you've needed some kind of help with your speech, language or swallowing from the start. Or conversely, it's something you've acquired later on during your lifetime, in which case you've had typical speech, language, swallowing skills, but for some reason now they aren't working quite like they used to. 

Speech & Language therapists work with a huge variety of people, from all kinds of countries, nationalities and backgrounds. It can be newborns, primary school children, teenagers, young adults, right through to individuals well over 100 years of age. Anyone who has suspected difficulties with their speech, language or swallowing skills, is referred to a Speech & Language therapist for an assessment, which helps to pinpoint what the problem might be. If the Speech & Language Therapist thinks the individual meets the criteria for therapy, the individual is then offered a course of therapy which is designed to meet their personal needs. Reasons why individuals access SLT vary from person to person, with the predominant reason being a need or desire to improve communication or swallowing skills, which are currently negatively impacting the individual's life. The causes for these problems, can include stroke, Parkinson's, head & neck cancer, autism, cerebral palsy, dysphagia, stammering, voice problems, speech sound disorder, motor neurone disease, dyspraxia, deprivation, poverty, psychological factors, to name but a few. 

When you start to learn about speech, language, voice, swallowing, and how it all works, it's strange because you begin to realise just how much we take these things for granted, as well as how little most people know about these functions, that we all do countless times a day, every single day of our lives. Until something goes wrong, or until you take time to learn about it, it's just a given that you will open your mouth and you will talk, and you will say everything and anything that you want to. It's a given that you will hear everyone speaking around you or to you, as a baby, and gradually you will pick out the sounds of your language, then how to combine them into words, before turning your words into sentences. You will observe those around you, and begin to understand how you interact and communicate with another living thing.You will learn more words, and more ways to combine them, as well as how to put them onto paper and read them. You will learn all the amazing things you can do with your voice. You might even learn another language. And everyday your lungs will breathe in and out plenty of air, and when you breathe out, your voice, which is completely and utterly unique to you, will be produced. Your lips, your teeth, your tongue and so on, will all make the right movements at exactly the right time, so you can form your words. You unconsciously make the necessary movements to change your tone, your pitch, your rate of speech to better express your message and how you feel. You will know the perfect words in your language, to express how you feel, in as much or as little detail as you want. Your knowledge of your language will help you combine those words, so that your message is given as accurately as possible, and so a speaker of your language can understand you. You will automatically hear a sound and recognise it as your language. You will understand the words formed from those sounds, and what they mean. You will understand how their meaning changes slightly, when you combine those words with other words, and in that particular way. You will understand what it means when the speaker says them in that particular way, in that particular tone, at that particular volume, with those particular facial expressions, body language, gestures.

These magical tools called speech and language, are what the entire world revolves around, and the basis upon which it is built. The glue that holds everything together. The string that binds us all to one another. The building blocks of thought. The currency that holds more value and importance than money and material possessions. The easiest, most efficient, most effective, most natural, simplest way of interacting and communicating with the world and the people in it. The currency needed to live your life and keep progressing forwards, as well as understand the people and world around you. The clearest way of getting those thoughts, those needs, those opinions, out of your mind and into the world, thereby expressing yourself to those around you. The clearest way of making sure a feeling is known. The best way of transmitting information and knowledge from your mind to the minds of others. The most direct and telling way to understand another human being, and the thoughts going on inside their head. The code needed to understand and enjoy TV, film, books, lyrics, the news, letters. The key to understanding instructions, guidebooks, manuals, how things work, how to make them work, how to participate in society. The passport that gives you membership to even participate and be an active member of society, communities, family, friendship groups, teams. If you imagine a world where no-one can speak, or if they can speak, no-one is using the same sounds in the same way for the same things, it's pretty clear to see how the quality and enjoyment of life rapidly decreases, alongside how the relatively smooth operating of day to day life suddenly grinds to a halt. 

Speech and language are vital to our existence, perhaps not always in a life or death kind of way, but their value, importance, fulfilment, as well as the key role that they play, are absolutely necessary to not only enjoy life, but to also keep the mechanics of life running. There's a difference between existing and living, after all. Yet as I previously mentioned, speech and language are so often undervalued, undermined, under-appreciated, taken for granted. We use our speech and language skills so readily, so often, so constantly,that we end up completely forgetting just how amazing they are, just how important they are, just how crucial they are, just how dependent we are on them. We don't realise the extent to which we take them for granted, and the extent to which our lives revolve around and are somewhat dictated by them. We don't even stop to consider what it would be like if  didn't know those words, couldn't attach meaning to those words, didn't know how to convert thoughts to words, didn't know how to put words together, let alone in a way that another person would understand. What if we couldn't summon our voice, couldn't translate our words into sounds, couldn't make those sounds, didn't know how to put them together, couldn't get the words out fast enough, or the words just got stuck in our mouths. What if we didn't hear our own language out of all the other sounds in the world, or what if we did, but it sounded like an endless stream of sound with no meaning. We don't stop to think about what it would be like if we woke up one morning, and found that we couldn't speak, think, express ourselves, or understand, hear and make sense of the world. We don't think what would it would be like, if we only had some of those skills, or maybe never even had those skills to begin with. All these possibilities seem like just that, possibilities, in the sense that they could happen, sure, but there's also a fairly reasonable chance that they won't. 

It's easy to feel quietly and confidently convinced that these potential problems won't happen to you, or that it's not that big a deal.Yet the reality is that for so many people around the world, communication and swallowing problems are present in their lives every single day, and they could easily happen to any of us at any time, any place. The communication and swallowing systems aren't permanent, unbreakable, indestructible from birth through to death. Just like everything else in life, things can go wrong, things can be damaged, sometimes with reason, sometimes for no reason at all. But the consequences that arise when the speech, language, swallowing systems go wrong, are, as you can imagine, rather big, and rather important. However because their value is so undervalued and overlooked, their importance falls to the bottom of the pile, even though the world as we know it, and mankind as we know it, would not be what it is without them. Granted, speech, language and swallowing aren't the crucial heartbeat that powers the body and keeps it alive, or the lungs that energise with oxygen, but they are the heartbeat of mankind, and the power source that keeps life moving. And that's pretty cool and rather important stuff there, as it is part of the reason why the Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists launched the Giving Voice campaign, back in 2010, which takes me back full circle.

Our communication and swallowing skills are crucial to our existence, and when all is going well, and working like it should, then that's all wonderful and hunky dory. However when they go wrong, they quickly become a very important problem, and very quickly create a negative impact on your life, to varying extents. So what do you do when that happens? How do you get back on track? Who do you turn to? This is where Speech & Language therapy comes in. Whenever there's a problem with the speech, language and swallowing systems, the world doesn't have to come to a halt and life doesn't have to be put on pause, because Speech & Language therapists are there to do a bit of a Bob the Builder, and help put things right and make them better. If any of the problems mentioned before, should ever happen to you, the great news is that there's an entire profession equipped with knowledge, tools, resources, evidence, skills and strategies, that's dedicated to supporting you and making a meaningful, positive, worthwhile difference to your life. There's people out there, myself included, who think speech, language and swallowing are so darn cool and interesting, that they want to train for three, four years, and do more training on top of that, to learn all about it. They then want to use what they've learnt to help you, if ever you should have problems with your communication or swallowing. And the best news is, there's some absolutely amazing people out there already doing this so incredibly well, and often without the almighty recognition they truly deserve. However potential cuts to funding, particularly in the present day, often put these crucial, essential and life changing services under threat. The importance of speech and language sadly gets overlooked, a lot of the time, and the amazing work of the Speech & Language profession becomes undervalued. Which is why Giving Voice is such an important campaign, because it aims to not only show the value and significance of all these things, but to also ensure that these brilliant communication and swallowing services are still there for those who need them most. It also helps ensure that the Speech & Language profession can continue to thrive and develop, in order to help change lives even more.

Now naturally me writing this rather long winded, general overview, isn't really going to make that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things, but I hope that if you made it this far, it's hopefully opened your eyes to the importance of speech and language in particular, and how it all works. I also hope it's taught you a bit more about the Speech & Language profession, and the great work being done right now, all across the world. All those lives being changed for the better! Amazing! And if I've managed to use my own voice, to make some kind of difference to your own awareness, knowledge or understanding, no matter how tiny, or inspired you take some kind of action, then that's absolutely wonderful.

If you want to find out more about the brilliant work done by Giving Voice, just take a look at the link below!

http://givingvoiceuk.org/