Total Communication Policy and Practice Guidelines Revisited

One of the satisfying things about working in a place you were once very familiar with, is the opportunity to revisit

and re-vamp previous work.

The Total Communication policy and guidelines were initially developed in Oldham and the main authors were myself and Helen Newman, in our roles as Speech & Language Therapists in the NHS.

Last year we reviewed the document and decided that it needed to be updated. With the support of New Bridge School,

I was able to spend some time working with Helen, adapting the policy and providing new guidance in the form of grab sheets. It was reassuring to know that many of our initial ideas were still relevant.

Helen and I are pleased with the results. It’s not perfect, but as a shared outline of the values underpinning and the approach to total communication, we think it works well. We think it contains most of the approaches we use but there will inevitably be some we need to add, maybe in another 18 years!

Alison Matthews