A recent television programme in the UK has sparked much debate in the disabled community… yep, you’ve guessed
it: The Undateables. It is often
taken with mixed reaction with some
viewing it as mocking and fuelling the
fire of bullying for the disabled community, though many others view it to
be a positive outreach of awareness
in the community. How the broadcasters for
this program describe it is: “People
living with challenging conditions are often
considered 'undateable' - this series meets a few and follows their attempts to
find love”.
Whilst this has become a hot debate, I am not here to write about my views
of bullying and portrayal of disabilities in the media, though that is one
topic I am sure I could more than fill a blog piece on. No, instead I am here to ask, what is the role of the SLT in all
this?
Recently I had a lecture on TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), here the SLT lecturer
said he worked with the client toward whatever goal the client selected, even
if it was the task of helping a client to ask another person for a date. Now so far in my work with adults with learning
disabilities I have seen SLTs work on
comprehension and understanding right from wrong and how to make choices
and express their daily needs. What this
program has got me to question is, if there is a role for supporting a member
of the TBI community to date for the SLT, should there not be a role for the SLT to support a member
of the LD community in dating? I
wonder how many adult therapists in LD or ASD settings work on this as a shared
priority goal?
For those who may not have seen the program, the second series now airing
on Channel 4 in the UK has followed 6 people: a man with autism, a man
with Tourette’s, a woman with aphasia, a man with Chron’s Disease,
a man with a learning disability, and a woman with dwarfism.
Of these people there were three that struck me as potential cases for an SLT; that of the man with autism, woman with aphasia and the man with a learning
disability. Now, if you think back
to the earlier question of whether this program raises awareness, what can be said for the first episode of the
series was that in the credits were the words “Thanks to the Royal College of Speech and Language
Therapists”, yet no mention of
SLT during the episode. It got me
thinking how much input people with
these different abilities get from the
SLT services in the UK at current, many of them appeared to be independent
in their life and not deemed as needing daily support, though there were many obvious communication challenges along
the way.
Many of my blog posts of lately appear to be ones reaching out to people
and questioning. I am more than curious
about how the services for adults with LD work in the UK and how it is that
SLTs prioritize in this busy time in the UK where SLT funding is low. If anyone has any thoughts or experiences I
would absolutely love to hear them.
And consider this, next time you
watch the Undateables, consider how much of an impact you could have on someone else’s communication and whether
or not as a SLT you are effectively
investigating what your clients wishes are for therapy and the goals they
have in life.
Youtube: The Undateables
Series 2 Episode 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZD_7xHxZyc
