County Health Partnerships’ Adult Speech and Language Therapy Service, who are part of Nottinghamshire Healthcare, enjoyed a successful second year at the Trust’s Older People’s Day event held at Park House Medical Centre at the beginning of the month.
The event gave the team a great opportunity to talk to visitors about the role of speech and language therapy and their work with older people.
Speech and language therapists frequently work with older people, helping them with their communication and swallowing difficulties. People often don’t realise that the therapists work with people with swallowing difficulties so it was a good opportunity to talk about how the service can help people after a Stroke or people with Dementia for example.
Tiffany Coles, who is a speech and language therapist with Nottinghamshire Healthcare, said: “We had some different foods for people to try at the Older People’s Day event, including the different consistencies we will recommend for people with swallowing difficulties.
“People tried some of the foods ranging from a pureed consistency in the form of a lemon mousse , a fork mashed consistency ginger roulade and soft consistency donuts to normal consistency grapes and apples. One of our Podiatry colleagues trialled some syrup thickened fluids and was pleasantly surprised.”
“We also talked to people about the importance of communication and got people involved in our ‘Knit’n’Natter’ session. We worked with a local nursing home to encourage them to invite their residents to the session and talk about their families and create a family tree. We continued this theme within our “Knit’n’Natter” session and invited our patients and their families to knit some leaves for our communication tree which was a huge success, encouraging communication opportunities and reasons to communicate. We are really looking forward to next year’s event”.
You can read more about how the Adult Speech and Language Therapy Team helped a patient with a condition called Aphasia http://tinyurl.com/pss9546
If you would like to find out more about how our Adult Speech and Language Therapy Service can help you, please visit the Trust’s website www.nottinghamshirehealthcare.nhs.uk or The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapist’s website www.rcslt.org
