My name is Sarah Roberts and I qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist from the University of Reading in 2008, and since then I have worked with a range of children and young people aged 0-19.  I have been working as part of the Children’s SALT team within South Warwickshire NHS University Foundation Trust since 2011. In recent years, I have specialised in supporting students with social, emotional and mental health needs, and I have a special interest in neurodiversity affirming and trauma informed practice. I enjoy getting to know each young person, being led by them to nurture their individual strengths and discover where support is needed. I aim to help develop robust, authentic, total communication and promote a maximally enabling communication environment for all students. Being at Venture Academy every week allows me to build connection and trust with a young person at their pace, and to collaborate with families, staff and other professionals to work as a team. This is so important, as communication happens all day, every day.

My role includes working across the school to train adults and promote a communication-friendly environment, as well as individual casework with students who need more specialised support. Typically, this involves observations in class, 1:1 sessions, and discussions with families, teaching staff and other professionals to gather information, make recommendations and co-produce targets. These targets are then typically supported by key, trusted adults in school/at home, and sometimes in direct therapy sessions. I am also involved in providing advice for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) and inputting into pupil profiles.

Speech and Language Therapy aims to assess and support individuals with a variety of areas, including:

• Self-advocacy skills and promoting autonomy, agency, self-esteem and self-identity. This can include making requests and choices, refusing, protesting, expressing opinions, expressing personal, sensory or learning needs, identifying and expressing feelings, asserting boundaries, and asking for help.
• Understanding, processing and remembering language
• Vocabulary and word finding
• Sentence structure and use of grammar
• Verbal reasoning, problem solving and perspective taking
• Speech sounds
• Stammering
• Exploring alternative and augmentative forms of communication (AAC)