Jo Pacey - Electronic Assistive Technology Service

I remember at a careers day at school I was asked to look at any areas of interest by my careers advisor.

I talked about communication and its fundamental role in all our lives being an area of interest for me, which naturally signposted me to a possible career in speech and language therapy.

Jumping forward more than 20 years and as a speech and language therapist working with Lincolnshire’s Electronic Assistive Technology Service (EATS), I find myself working with a range of adults with different communication, physical and sensory difficulties; some who have experienced these difficulties all of their lives and others who have developed these difficulties in adulthood.

The EATS team works with individuals and their speech and language therapists to assess for electronic solutions to help communication.

This falls into the area of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and these high tech solutions are often referred to as communication aids.

Working with the individual to identify their goals is central to this and this often focuses around key themes of choice, control, independence and interaction with others; all key areas where communication is central.

It is not difficult to see the job satisfaction that comes from working with people and their families to identify communication aids that can help people achieve those goals, whether this is being able to communicate with carers about how they want to be cared for or being able to engage with friends and family about the latest news.

Job satisfaction also comes from working with such a varied team of people including other speech and language therapists in their specialist area of work (a great opportunity to learn things from our colleagues) and occupational therapists.

Also, this is the only area of speech and language therapy I know where we get to work with clinical technologists and clinical scientists, professions which are so different to speech and language therapists.

We are all aware of how quickly technology changes and this is no different in the world of AAC, and so we have the challenge (and an enjoyable one) of keeping up to date with all the new technology and innovations that can support someone’s communication, making sure an individual has access to the equipment that can best support their AAC needs.

So from attending a careers day and reflecting on areas of interest to continuing to be part of a profession that changes people’s lives for the positive through communication years later, we can look forward to more years of development in the profession to come.