SALT Workforce Toolkit

New toolkit aims to strengthen retention in speech and language therapy workforce

A new toolkit designed to improve retention within the speech and language therapy (SLT) workforce has been welcomed by Professor Victoria Joffe, Professor of Speech and Language Therapy at the University of Essex, who said it could help support delivery of the NHS 10-Year Health Plan.

Sustain and Retain – Optimising Retention in the Speech and Language Therapy Workforce was developed and implemented by Dr Katie Chadd, Lecturer in Speech and Language Therapy in the School of Health and Social Care at the University of Essex, working in partnership with Jemma Yarnton-Peacock, Lead Practice Education Facilitator at ESNEFT.

It was co-produced with speech and language therapy practitioners and therapy managers across the east of England.

The toolkit explores workforce challenges facing the profession and shares practical, evidence-based solutions to help organisations retain staff.

The NHS 10 Year Health Plan focuses on three key ambitions: moving more care into local communities, increasing the use of digital services and placing greater emphasis on prevention rather than treatment.

Professor Joffe believes a strong and sustainable workforce is essential to achieving these goals.

She said: “We have to ensure there is an acknowledgement and realisation of how speech and language therapists and AHPs can help with the move to community with health promotion and with digital health.

“It is really important we recruit the right speech and language therapists to do the job, that we educate them appropriately and allow development and training for the existing workforce then you are helping to ensure sustainability of staff.

“This is critical for everybody’s role.

“As a service user myself, I want to be able to feel confident that when I need one of the services they are going to be there, they’re at the right level that they focus appropriately to provide the service that I need.

“So there has to be a focus otherwise we will not have a workforce that serves the community.”

Dr Katie Chadd said the toolkit provides practical ideas developed and tested by practicing therapists.

She said: “These are tried and tested methods and activities – not something that is telling the workforce what to do.

“All of the ideas within the toolkit are speaking to different aspects that we believe are associated with reasons why people would stay in their jobs.

“For example, one of the themes that came out of the research concerned access to continuous professional development (CPD) opportunities.

“Many speech and language therapists said if they could do more of this, it would be a strong reason why they would wish to stay in the job.

“In the toolkit there are ideas of initiatives, programmes that people have developed in their teams to widen access to CPD, to make it less stressful to get hold of those opportunities.”

Dr Chadd added: “The project was supported by the University of Essex Impact Accelerator Fund Programme – a strategic University of Essex initiative to increase and speed up the beneficial social, economic, policy, and environmental impacts of our research around the world.”

The toolkit is available on the University of Essex repository.