Miranda Chapman - Speech and Language Therapy Assistant

I have been a speech and language therapy assistant since 1993 (probably before some of my newer colleagues were born!).

Over that time I have worked with many lovely people and travelled many miles round Lincolnshire.

The Speech and Language Therapy Service in those early days was all one team including Paediatrics, Learning Disabilities and Adults. My first role was divided between therapy in clinics for pre-school and school age children; delivering therapy in special schools and a day a week working with adult outpatients at the local hospital.

After some years, the south of the county combined with the north and the services were divided. I was then employed in the Paediatric team. As part of this role I helped introduce an early intervention programme into pre-school and school settings targeting those children who had poor communication skills but did not necessarily need therapy. I really enjoyed this work and it was great to see how a child could blossom into a confident talker.

For the past few years I have been working predominantly with children in mainstream schools and pre-schoolers in clinic. I do enjoy this work as well and am lucky that my day can include so many varied activities; I cannot count the number of times I have played Pop Up Pirate or fished for picture cards!

One area that I have found particularly challenging is the technology – it has taken years for me to feel confident with using a computer – how did we manage before? This has been particularly testing over the last months but we have been able to continue delivering therapy via e-consultations. Pop Up Dragon and fishing are not quite as much fun though!