Welcome and June re-cap

Hi 👋

Wow it's already the end of June, I know I probably say this every year but wow it goes quickly once we hit spring.

I hope you are all looking forward to the summer holidays. It's a bit of a juggle managing childcare and planning fun days out. I hope you manage some rest mixed in there. For me I love sitting in the garden reading my book.

Let me start by introducing myself. If we were sat down with a cup of tea the first thing you'd probably notice is that I'm Scottish. Although my family claim my accent has been watered down!

I'm Suzanne, I'm the Speech and Language Therapist behind Chat and Play. I've been an SLT since 2010 working mostly in the NHS. Earlier this year I made the leap to leave my NHS role and pursue going it alone. This is when chat and play was formed. I was the pre-school clinical lead in the NHS and I was burnt out. I wanted to get back to the roots of why I loved my job, spoiler it's not the paperwork!

Friends and family keep asking me "how's it going" and my honest answer is "I'm loving it". That's not to say it's without it's challenges (social media!!) but reconnecting with families and having fun doing therapy has reignited my passion for my job.

June re-cap

It's been a busy month!

I started the month helping my husband out on a classic car rally. I know nothing about cars but there were some lovely lunch spots.

The two Elklan Speech and Language Support courses I've been running for nursery and school staff continued. We've had fun learning about the stages of play development and strategies they can use to support language learning.
I love hearing all their stories and feedback from the week when they try new strategies out. I get so many good ideas from them. One of them this week created a whole play scene of an aeroplane including first class seats and complaining customers!

I started some new therapy blocks in schools and continued with some of my regular little ones. I've been seeing such good progress which makes me so happy. One mum sent me a video of the little one absolutely smashing her words. Honestly nothing makes me happier than celebrating that success with you!

I did some CPD (continuing professional development) around Natural Language Acquisition, those little ones who use phrases to communicate and learn language in chunks. This is something I'm seeing more and more, you might hear about GLP or Gestalt language processing as more and more parents and SLTs are realising this is how their little ones are learning language.

I met up with another local independent SLT for a coffee and a catch up. One of the things I was worried about when I left the NHS was missing working in a team. I'm learning it's about finding your team in new ways.

Things I'm looking forward to in July

Hopefully more sunshine but maybe not too hot if that's possible

My sister and niece are coming to visit next week it will be lovely to catch up with my sister and have some days out

Meeting new families, I'll be working most of the summer so I've got some new assessment sessions booked in I can't wait to meet them.

I hope you have a great week

Suzanne