Life as a Consultant

So, I have recently begun a 5 week block placement and am now 2 weeks in. I am enjoying it immensly and cannot wait to be fully qualified now!

However, I found the biggest shock to be going into mainstream primary schools.  Here a consultative model of working is used, whereby a child is referred, then the SLT goes into the school and assess's the child.  A report of their abilities and difficulties is then produced and circulated to relevant individuals (family, health professionals, allied health, educational staff) and a programme of work is sent to be put in place by the family or the Teaching Assistant.  This was highly intriguing as my previous placement had a very different model of working following the Expert direct 1:1 model whereby the SLT went into school to engage in assessment, therapy and review, any programme that was left was as an extra on top of the therapy she had previously worked on during the day.

So, this leaves me thinking..is the future for SLT to move toward this more consulatative model? It's more financially beneficial for the service, it eases up more time to see more children and the programme is being put in place by the person that see's the child the most.. so what could be the downfall to this? Does this then undermine the job role? Do Parents still view us as supporting health professionals?

Though I feel that both the service and the child may benefit from the consultative model, what this postgraduate degree has taught me is to dig deeper to find out something is truly as good as it may appear on the surface. 

I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on your experiences of the SLT service, and the future you think this holds for us.

Its officially the weekend now, so happy May Bank Holiday everyone - see you on the other side!
 - Gemma