Spotlight I

Meet Ulla Carl, a speech-, language-, and hearing therapist and member of the Danish SLT association Audiologopædisk Forening (ALF), who currently works at “Hearing Counselling - Children and Young People”, where she is responsible for knowledge input and dissemination, projects, databases, and counselling quality.

Today we want to showcase Ulla’s involvement as project manager in the project "TRAP-UP" (short for Transnational Professional Upgrading Project), which is an innovation and development project granted by the Erasmus+ programme that ran from September 2020 to August 2023 and ended recently with a successful international webinar.

With TRAP UP a web platform was created that contains information, materials and concepts to use with deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) pupils, aiming to provide knowledge and share best practices to create the best possible school environment.

Professionals from four different countries were involved in the project, contributed to the platform, and developed materials and concepts for:

1. Classroom design:  a guide to establishing the best classroom conditions for DHH pupils. 
2. E-learning: a course for teachers and other professionals on the inclusion of pupils with hearing loss.
3. Teaching materials: to learn the native spoken language and the native sign language.
4. Distance teaching: instructional videos and guides on how to model distance teaching for pupils in local schools to access qualified teaching.

All contents are available free of charge in English, German, Slovenian, and Finish on the TRAP UP website. Additionally, the project provides recommendations on how to adapt and implement materials and concepts into further languages, cultures, and countries.

Ulla herself is a child of parents with hearing loss and has siblings with hearing loss. Even before graduating from Copenhagen University in 1991, she has been immersed in the topic of hearing loss. Among many others, some of her career milestones include: (1) being the head of new education to become interpreter for deafened adults, (2) being the project manager of a project for adults with hearing loss/deaf in the working market: “Save your job”, (3) teaching reading and writing to deaf adults (sign language speakers), (4) counselling parents of DHH children, using Auditory Verbal Therapy, and (5) assisting in hearing tests and counselling children, pupils and families at an Audiological centre...

And if all of that wasn’t enough, Ulla is now taking the certification to become an LSL-specialist at A.G Bell (the academy for listening and spoken language).

Feel inspired? If you have questions regarding the TRAPUP project, the materials or anything else regarding teaching deaf and hard of hearing pupils, please go to Contacts at Trapup or feel free to reach out to Ulla herself at ulla.carl@rsyd.dk.

Spotlight II

Caroline Van Looy, member of the Belgian SLT association VVL, has been a speech therapist for over 20 years, and in that time she incorporated many modalities into her therapeutic practice. In 1998, she graduated from the University of Louvain with a Master’s degree in Speech Therapy and Audiology. For the past 25 years, she has specialised in treating people with Voice Problems. Her areas of expertise include manual therapy, osteopathic techniques, taping, cupping, dry needling and other therapeutic modalities to help people with vocal issues.

She first attended a manual therapy course in 2000, when many of her colleagues thought that she was stepping outside of Speech Therapy. Today, in 2023, many SLPs complete training in Manual Therapy and several studies support the effectiveness of this approach for voice, swallowing and even reflux management.

Most recently, Caroline has retrained in Medical Acupuncture and after seeing how effective it has been in her practise, she reached out to Stephen King from London’s Voice Care Centre. Stephen created the Voice Care model in the UK, enabling greater access to private voice therapy services from a biopsychosocial perspective. As a Co – Founder of the not for profit Vocal Health Education, he has overseen the education of over 2,000 externally accredited Vocal Health First Aiders and several industry leading Voice Rehabilitation Specialists.

Together, Caroline and Steven began to work on a book to consolidate the research available for acupuncture and the treatment of voice and swallowing conditions. It’s taken them 6 months of collaboration, study, workshopping their ideas and gathering data from their respective patients. 

Their book “Relational Acupuncture for Voice Professionals” will be published by New Voice Publishing in the UK and covers a comprehensive overview of the literature in this field. 

Are you also interested in Manual Therapy and the use of Medical Acupuncture in the context of Speech and Language Therapy? Feel free to reach out to Caroline at van.looy.caroline@gmail.com. Her first 4-day workshop “Medical acupuncture Belgium” will be held on October 9th-12th 2023 in Antwerp, Belgium.

Spotlight III

Nominated by Sónia Silva, we are thrilled to bring to your attention the outstanding work of Ana Claudia Lopes, a dedicated researcher and Speech and Language Therapist pursuing her PhD in Rehabilitation Sciences at Aveiro University in Portugal.

Ana Claudia's doctoral thesis, under the guidance of Dr. Marisa Lousada, focuses on evaluating the impact of an intervention program with refugees, aiming to enhance exclusive breastfeeding rates for up to six months and improve breastfeeding knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and practices among refugee mothers. The project addresses a crucial aspect of maternal and infant health and contributes to the empowerment of pregnant women and recent mothers by fostering breastfeeding support and enhancing their overall quality of life. The intervention takes place at a Health Center in Lisbon, involving refugee, migrant, and asylum-seeking women, with plans to expand to Madrid and Athens.

The significance of Ana Claudia and Marisa´s work extends beyond the academic realm. It showcases a holistic approach that considers the cultural, linguistic, and emotional needs of a diverse group of women, making it an exemplary model for cross-cultural interventions in the field of Speech and Language Therapy. Her dedication to bridging gaps and breaking barriers aligns seamlessly with the mission of ESLA to foster connections, celebrate success, and spread awareness of groundbreaking developments across the field of Speech and Language Therapy by not only enriching the lives of refugee mothers and infants but also setting a precedent for collaborative, inclusive, and impactful work within our dynamic community.