RCSLT placement expansion and innovation campaign

The RCSLT’s practice-based learning guidance details the wide range of possible placement opportunities and highlights the innovation in placement education as a result of COVID-19.

To support the campaign, we’re also sharing case studies that demonstrate the benefit of placements for students, practice educators and service users.

Campaign objectives

The main objectives of the placements expansion campaign are:

• To encourage members to support the future workforce and to increase placement capacity.
• To promote the importance of practice placements.
• To promote and raise awareness of the full range of different practice placement models and different activities that can be undertaken by students.
• To listen to any apprehensions SLTs might have about providing practice placements and aim to problem solve these issues.

Key messages

RCSLT has planned a detailed programme of activities, including social media engagement, a webinar, a podcast and case studies of successful placements.

The key messages of this campaign are:

• Placements are a critical part of the whole workforce; everyone who is a qualified SLT has benefitted from placements in the past, and so should support placement opportunities to sustain the future SLT workforce.
• Placements can be innovative; client and non-client facing and bespoke to the setting, or through interprofessional education and role emerging settings.
• No specialism is too specialist for a placement
• Placements provide the opportunity to create new links between students, qualified SLTs, and HEIs.
• HEIs are struggling to find placement opportunities, so we need SLTs support them
• Virtual placements provide opportunities to overcome the challenges of the pandemic.
• Placements offer a mutually beneficial learning experience between providers and students.
• The RCSLT’s practice-based learning guidance 2021 provides significant guidance to help support those providing placements.

RCSLT encourages all members to get involved in this campaign which runs throughout March 2021.

You can do so by following @RCSLT on Twitter and using #FutureofSLT and #AHPpracticelearning to join the conversation.

Resources

Webinar

The RCSLT hosted a webinar on the importance of placements on 26 March 2021.

The panel of expert presenters included Jo Sandiford, the lead author of the practice-based learning guidance, an SLT working in independent practice and a newly-qualified practitioner.

Download the presentation slides (PDF)

Podcast series

Our three-part series of podcasts about student placements is now live. All episodes are available to listen to on SoundCloud.

• Part 1: Setting the scene – Jo Sandiford, lead author of the practice-based learning guidance, discusses how placements are evolving, the impact of the pandemic, and how we hope to create more placements in the future to meet the needs of the profession.
• Part 2: The student perspective – we talk to three speech and language therapy students about the importance of placements to their education.
• Part 3: Views of practice educators and managers – we ask practice educators and service managers about the importance of placements to them and the profession.

Case studies

As part of the campaign, we’re sharing case studies that demonstrate the benefits of placements for both students and practice educators.