Communication accreditation for learning disability team

The Trust’s learning disability community team and inpatient unit has been accredited for improving staff learning around communication accessibility.

The team can now display Communication Access UK’s ‘Communication Access Symbol’, demonstrating their commitment to always being mindful of people’s communication needs.

The Communication Access Symbol has been developed to identify businesses and organisations whose staff have undergone training to help them to better support the needs of people with communication difficulties.

Through the training, staff gain the skills and confidence to engage with people with communication difficulties more effectively. Displaying the symbol allows people with communication difficulties to recognise that the Trust has made appropriate adjustments to support their needs.

The accreditation is in place for 12 months.

Komal Shires, professional lead for speech and language therapy, said: “This is brilliant news and I would like to thank the speech and language therapists for leading this piece of work in their areas, all the staff who took the time to complete the training, and management for their support.

“The speech and language therapists will now be working with the wider learning disability team to put a programme in place to plan how we can continually improve and develop to make our services more accessible. We hope that over time more of the Trust’s services will successfully gain this accreditation.”

Services looking to become accredited can visit https://communication-access.co.uk/ to find out more.