Students' support for people with communication difficulties

Students will be raising awareness of how speech and language therapy can help children and adults with communication difficulties.

They have formed a new society and plan to form a national network for SLT students across the country. They also hope to raise cash for a charity in East Africa called Yellow House which supports speech and language therapy in East Africa.



The SLT Society was launched at De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) and have 26 members who all study the Speech and Language Therapy BSC Hons course.

The SLT programme also works with #DMUlocal and Leicester’s hospitals to go into schools to work with children who have developmental needs such as delayed language skills.

Hawa Mulla, 21, from Oadby, is the head of communications for the new society. She said: “Not many people know what we do. We hope to raise awareness of our profession and our clients, such as children with speech and communication needs, people with eating and swallowing difficulties.

“The society is also a nice social way to get to know the other year groups and link with other SLT courses at universities across the country and build up a network.”

Hawa came across SLT as a career when researching which health professions to study and found it a perfect fit.

She said “From a young age I always knew I wanted to work with people and give back to the community in some way, I was always drawn towards healthcare. However, I had never heard of SLT until I did some research into the allied healthcare professions and when I came across SLT it caught my interest.”

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After taking a year out of education to work in a primary school, Hawa enrolled on the course. Her favourite part is working on placement. She said: “It is only when you’re on placement, working with a client and watching them progress that you realise why you chose to be an SLT in the first place. I get a great sense of reward from this. As interesting and important the lectures are, it only really starts to come together when put into practice.”

They work with parents, carers and other professionals, such as teachers, nurses, occupational therapists and doctors. There are around 17,000 practising SLTs in the UK.

During the event they showed their support for the campaign Bercow: 10 years on which highlights the need for Government to improve support for children and young people with speech, language and communications needs.