Auditory Verbal UK’s policy for joint working with professionals

All families are allocated a key therapist who they work with on a fortnightly basis for their Auditory Verbal therapy sessions. Caseloads are overseen by the clinical lead or clinical advisor.

Principles

Intervention is most effective when the team around the child work together towards parents' chosen goal for their child. Collaborative working is central to the success of the child’s AV programme and we recognise the importance of a cohesive team.

With parents’ consent, we typically work with the child’s Teacher of the Deaf (ToD), speech and language therapist (SLT) and audiologist, alongside members of the medical team.  Once children enter nursery or school we work closely with teachers, teaching assistants (TAs) and learning support assistants (LSAs).

Some families who are exploring Auditory Verbal therapy as an approach may request that we do not contact their local team until they have made a decision. We will be in touch as soon as possible once a family has enrolled on the programme.

Working in collaboration means:

• Liaising with you on a regular basis to share thinking about a child’s progress, set goals and exchange information and observations.
• Offering feedback to audiologists and ToDs regarding the functional validation of the technology on the children that we work with, to ensure optimal fitting of technology.
• Contributing to goals and reports, and attending Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) meetings.
• Inviting you to attend Auditory Verbal therapy sessions at our centre with the family. 

Standards

We aim to adhere to the HCPC standards of conduct, performance and ethics at all times in our work with colleagues. Specifically:

Standard 2.5 You must work in partnership with colleagues, sharing your skills, knowledge and experience where appropriate, for the benefit of service users and carers.

Standard 2.6 You should share relevant information, where appropriate, with colleagues involved in the care, treatment or other services provided to a service user.

Practice

In order to do this we will:

• Email or write to you to inform you that we have started to work with a family that you see.
• Discuss who will administer assessments to a child, which assessments and when, to avoid repetitions.
• Share results with you of the six-monthly standardised assessments we conduct for all children on our programme.
• Share copies of 3 or 6 month goals with you via post or email.
• If requested, share copies of the latest take home messages for a family, via email following their session.
• Liaise with you by phone or email.

We ask that you:

• Share results of assessments you administer.
• Share your current long and short term goals and session observation sheets.
• Invite us to annual reviews, IEP, team around the child or multi-agency review meetings.
• Liaise with us regularly to share your current observations and goals for the family.

Contacting us:

You can call our centres (01869 325000) and ask to speak to a family’s lead therapist, or you can email the therapist direct. You can find therapists’ details by clicking here.