At Blossom House we prioritise the three pillars of EBP in the following ways:
- External and Internal Scientific Evidence: We are committed to offering evidence-based interventions across all ages, such as collaborative working with teachers, explicit vocabulary teaching and established facilitation techniques. We regularly review our outcome measure tools and the content of our therapy, to ensure these are supported by evidence. We have a number of staff who are RCSLT ‘Research Champions’ and the school has a designated SLT Research Lead who oversees and guides research. We have established links with University College London (UCL), take on student SLTs and support recruitment for research studies. We have a journal club where latest research pieces are discussed and a termly Research Newsletter with relevant resources and links. We encourage all staff to engage in small-scale research projects to gather evidence for the impact of our work.
- Developing Clinical Expertise: We offer protected time and resources for regular Continued Professional Development (CPD) and opportunities for staff to feedback on external training. We encourage our staff to develop their clinical specialisms within the group of students we support. Further, our SLT team has access to regular clinical supervision.
- Service User / caregiver perspective: Facilitating students to express their opinions and feelings is a key aspect of our work. The SLT team have been pivotal in developing student-friendly versions of the Annual Review Pupil Voice document and a Racial Diversity Survey. These have been recognised by the wider profession, in an article in the RCSLT Bulletin (Spring 2022) and in a Poster Presentation at the Research Champions conference, June 2022. Read more here
