I am Donell a project search intern from Hackney. For the past 10 weeks I have been working with the Hackney Speech & Language Therapy team and I have written a blog which you can read here.
Day 1
I started the speech and language placement today with an open mind as I was introduced to what the placement has in mind for the next 10 weeks and what is speech and language in general with my mentor Jenny.
This placement is the first I have ever done online so it was a great opportunity for me but also for my mentor and my fellow colleagues at speech and language Hackney to see how this placement will work out. If successful it will open the gateway for other people who have a disability like me to have the same opportunity that I have.
Day 2
I worked on a project with my mentor jenny on how to improve speech and language social media accounts as it is important nowadays to have online presence, particularly in lockdown. I gave my feedback on their social media accounts and how they could be improved.
Day 3
The best thing that I did today was the website project. The website project is about making changes to the Get Hackney Talking website so that it benefits young people like me in the future. The website project involved me giving my opinion about the website and asking young people themselves about how to improve the website as whole. I have learnt loads of new skills doing this website project such as using software to produce a questionnaire which will help the speech and language website team to make changes.
Day 4
Earlier today I prepared a presentation on powerpoint about my internship.
In the afternoon I done a presentation to the speech and language team about who I am as a person, what is my internship about and how me being in the team is going to improve speech and language in the future. I presented my presentation on zoom to about 88 speech and language therapists which is an achievement to me as I have never done this before especially virtually as well. The new skills that I have learnt is how to do PowerPoint slides to a high standard and learning how to present presentations on zoom.
Day 5
Today I met more of the speech and language therapist team virtually via zoom as it’s necessary for me to know who the other members of the team are and what speech and language therapists do daily. This has really helped me understand how my work as an intern will help and benefit the young people in Hackney. The difficulties today were the technical problems during the meetings especially when important information is being said. The new skills that I have learnt is booking and doing meetings virtually via zoom.
Day 6
Since my time as an intern with the speech and language department I have been speaking to some therapists about youth justice and the connection that youth justice has with speech and language.
In addition to it I had a meeting with a barrister about youth justice and the system which I found really interesting and it helped me to understand better. Also, I learned about his job as a barrister and how that’s been affected by the coronavirus.
I think it’s very important for people of all ages but especially young people to understand how this system works as it is essential information that is not known to a lot of people. As a result I created a quiz so that people can brush up their knowledge about the youth justice system with an easy quiz.
You can take a look at the quiz here.
Understanding what youth justice is and how the system works is really complicated for anyone who isn’t in criminal justice to understand it and it is hard to find the information as there are so many bits of information for one specific topic.
Day 7
Today is my final day as an intern on this project. This placement has been a real learning curve for me as a person who had speech and language therapy in the past to see the behind the scenes of it. I am very grateful that I had an opportunity to work with the speech and language team in Hackney to improve the services that young people will use in the future.
The only two problems that I could think of is just understanding the task fully and technical problems that I had during the placement since I was working from home.
On this placement the new skills that I have learnt is….
- To book meetings on google meets and zoom and present them
- I leant things about how speech and language work in a more in-depth
- Learning about user experience
- Learning about youth justice system
- Learning about how digital marketing especially in social media works
- Dealing with data
- Learnt how to use WordPress and Surveymeets
- Know what a blog is and how to write one.
- How speech and language links to crime
- Different types of speech and language therapist
I am very grateful that I had an opportunity to work with speech and language to improve the services that young people will use in the future.
From D
