Dame Hannah Rogers Trust

Area Covered

Far SW England

Population Served

All ages

Scale

This is a new and developing service. We have a second site based at ‘Hannahs at Seale Hayne’, near Newton Abbot. Over the past year (2011) we saw 15 clients for assessment. This number is increasing as our service grows.

Services Provided

We can offer:

• Specialist AAC assessments helping the client to explore various communication aids.
• Flexible assessments that can be carried out by our experienced staff at Seale-Hayne/Ivybridge or in the person’s home/ education setting.
• A multi-disciplinary team of speech and language therapists, OT, specialist teachers, IT technician with many years of experience and expertise in the field of AAC.
• Assessments which are carried out collaboratively with families, carers and professionals.
• A bank of AAC devices to trial.
• Bespoke training to learn about the communication aid and how to implement most effective use.
• We are currently carrying out joint research with Plymouth University: “Increasing the communicative opportunities and skills of students with multiple physical and sensory disabilities”. This project focuses on working more closely and collaboratively with parents and carers, supporting them to support their sons/daughters use of alternative communication systems.
• Continued specialist outreach to support implementation of a communication aid.
• Opportunity of maintaining up to date knowledge on the latest technology via training/communication aid road shows.

Staffing

We dedicate the equivalent of 1 full time speech and language therapist from our team to assessment and outreach. We work flexibly according to need of the client and match specific needs to staffing expertise. As part of a large organisation working with children and adults with a range of disabilities, we work as part of a multi-disciplinary team and according to the referral criteria can access specialist physiotherapists, OT, teachers as well as speech and language therapists and assistants to carry out the assessment.

Funding

Assessments and follow-up intervention is currently funded by a range of sources including Continuing Health Care, Health Trusts, local Education Authorities, Private funding.

Permanent or Project

Permanent

Year Founded

2010

Referral Process

Presently most referrals are made by local speech and language therapists and this is a preferred route. However it is possible to make self referrals.