Lovely news: Giving Voice Awards 2019

Hello!
Long time no see... how are you? I hope you're well, and that your week is treating you kindly so far.

I have had some much needed time off from tweeting and blogging this year, whilst I completed my second year of my speech and language therapy (SLT) degree and had a break over the summer. I am excited to be metaphorically dipping my toes back in again!

The real reason I am writing this post is that I get to share some incredibly lovely news today...

I am so excited to announce that I was nominated for a joint Giving Voice award by the wonderful Janet Harrison! 


I received a Giving Voice award alongside Jacqui Learoyd and Claire Westwood, and I feel very lucky to be in such good company. We have been recognised for our 'outstanding' and 'sustainable' social media campaign to 'shine a light on the transformative work of speech and language therapists'; including both the #mySLTday and the #mystudentSLTday hashtags. The lovely Janet recorded a video where she talks about her nominations:
Giving Voice is the SLT campaign working to 'give voice' to and support anyone with a speech, language, swallowing or communication need. You can read more about Giving Voice here.
We were invited to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) honours ceremony and the Giving Voice awards event, 25th September 2019, the evening of the first day of the RCSLT conference 2019! We were presented our awards by HRH The Countess of Wessex, our RCSLT patron. I had such an amazing evening at the awards, it was a humbling and special night. I felt very proud to be part of the speech and language therapy community and to know such incredible humans. 
HRH The Countess of Wessex, patron of RCSLT, Nick Hewer, RCSLT president presenting us with our awards
A massive thank you (again) to Janet for nominating me, it is so amazing to even have been nominated and I am so grateful for her support! I was so happy to meet Janet and thank her in person at the awards evening - meeting her was definitely one of my very favourite part of the evening.

I am delighted to have received the award with Jacqui and Claire, who are both incredible and amazing SLT's. It was such a pleasure to meet them in real life and get to know them. I am so excited to see what they both do next! 

Jacqui, Claire, Myself, Janet and Michaela
As a student SLT, it is a complete honour to be involved with the RCSLT and Giving Voice. The recognition means so much to me, I really have loved studying speech and language therapy so far. It’s wonderful being able to share what we do, raise awareness of our profession, the RCSLT and the amazing people we are privileged to help.


I really loved the new prompts by Giving Voice and RCSLT for SLTs on social media to collate and connect everyone’s experiences and stories. #mySLTday is a wonderful way to share and raise awareness of what we do, and with scope for this to reach wider audiences. I saw a really great opportunity for student SLT too, and having loved sharing my student experiences on social media - I thought #mystudentSLTday would be a fab addition to share out SLT stories! Big thank you to the Giving Voice team for all their support with this, it has been wonderful to see it grow this year.

So, to finish up this post today I am sharing some thoughts about social media and how we might continue to use and make the most of it as SLT's... I would love to know what you think!

I believe that we can continue to utilise social media to connect with other SLTs and students, share information, research and support, to raise awareness of our profession and how we can support people with SLCNs. 

I am passionate that our next steps in social media and profession are to continue to expand our reach and communities beyond SLT to: education, SENCOs, justice system, families and parents - and many more!
In addition to this, we can support our student and SLT colleagues to use social media in their professional lives. 
I would would love to see speech and language therapy societies and groups further connected across universities - with collaboration, support, and sharing of resources & research being the aim - perhaps connecting similar to RCSLT hubs.

Finally, a big big thank you to the RCSLT team for organising the event and for having me!

Photos below (L to R): Della Money, RCSLT Chair, and myself! The 2019 award winners. Myself and RCSLT banner!





Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post, I really do appreciate it! As always, I would love to chat with you so please don't hesitate to pop me a comment below, find me on twitter, ping me an email at speechieatdmu@gmail.com or find me on LinkedIn. 

 Have a lovely rest of your day,

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