ABOUT

Tell us who you are!

Jasmin Mistry, 22, Speech and Language Therapist.

So what do you actually do?

Speech and Language therapists provide treatment, support and care for children and adults who have difficulties with communication, eating, drinking and swallowing.

I work in a specialist school for children with autism where the majority of my work consists of developing my students’ social skills and emotional well-being.

What has your career path been?

I completed a degree in Speech and Language Therapy at the University of Manchester. The three years I studied were the hardest of my life so far, the intensity of the course negatively impacted my emotional well-being and I was close to dropping out.

However, after trying to find a job amid a global pandemic I was able to secure my dream job supporting children and young people with autism.

All the stress of the degree/ job searching was worth it!

What is the best part of your job?

The children I work with tend to have difficulties developing relationships and will often have significant mental health difficulties.

I am able to work with these students every day on a 1:1 basis to build on a relationship/rapport in order to support their ability to communicate their needs.

It is heartwarming when a student starts to trust you and they feel comfortable speaking to you about their difficulties - it’s part my job to help them communicate this as well we advocate for them.

Why do you do your job?

I am passionate about helping those with communication difficulties to be able to express themselves.

The children I work with are amazing and they need help developing the skills to be able to cope in our society. The children can be put at a disadvantage due to their special educational needs so I love being able to support them to reach their full potential.

Autism is starting to become more recognised by society but our current society is not equipped to be as inclusive as we can be, I love educating those around me about the positive impact people with autism have to the world.

One piece of advice for someone starting in your role?

My job requires you to be emotionally resilient, especially when you hear about the difficulties the children face so you need to take care of your emotional well-being.

Talk to people! It’s okay to feel overwhelmed and drained, there’s a lovely community of speech and language therapists who know and can relate to the struggles!

Check out Jasmin’s Instagram below!

DAY IN THE LIFE

First thing (whilst having a coffee to wake up), I have a whole school meeting where we discuss student successes as well as ‘students of concern’ and plans to support the students.

At 9am, I typically lead a group therapy session focused on developing my students’ speaking and listening skills. This will usually include around 3-6 children on my caseload where we work on skills to develop their expressive language skills as well as social skills. I typically like to run debate-style activities.

Throughout the day I will have 1:1 direct sessions with some of the students on my caseload. I will extract a student from their lesson and work on specific areas of intervention. For example, I have a student who has difficulty formulating grammatically correct sentences so I run a number of activities to increase this skill. I will usually see a student for around 30-45 minutes per session, but it all depends on how much intervention they need.

I tend to run therapy sessions incorporating my students specialist interests. For example, a student of mine loves cars so I will create communicate activities around this to promote engagement.

Whenever I am not with the students, I am catching up on my admin tasks. I write case notes after each session as a legal requirement as well as completing communication reports which will be included in their EHC plan.

I will attend meetings with other professionals (eg psychotherapists, occupational therapists, education staff) where we may discuss the progress of a student as well as ways we can support them if they are experiencing some difficulties.

I tend to support the students out in the community where they are tasked with completing activities to support their independence. For example, taking the bus to a given location. A speech therapist can support the students to access this.

At 3.30 the students leave and I am able to finish up on any admin tasks of the day as well we plan my sessions for the next day. As all the speech therapists are back in the office (there’s around 8 of us), we tend to offload/ support each other at this time- we really need it!

Once I’ve finished my tasks for the day I go home!- it’s usually around 4.30-5.00.