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Speakers
Andrea Richards
Andrea Richards is an independent speech and language therapist whose specialism is working with mainstream primary schools, bridging the gap between education and health.
She prioritises recommendations from high profile reviews, such as the Bercow Report and ICAN’s ‘Speaking up for the Covid Generation’, in which early identification of need, early intervention, and joint working between services are highlighted as essential.
Andrea is the author of The Chatterbugs Manual – a 12 week programme designed to develop the foundation communication skills in children in the Early Years’ Foundation Stage (Nursery and Reception). The targeted skills are attention and listening, turn-taking, and building vocabulary and sentence structure, thereby developing children’s readiness for learning in school.
Andrea has extensive clinical experience working with a wide range of clients, from pre-schoolers to young adults. Having also worked as a Teaching Fellow at University College London, contributing to the undergraduate and postgraduate Speech Therapy courses, her clinical practice is informed by sound evidence-based approaches.
Her website can be found at www.chatschool.org
Dr Dave Roberts
A qualified Social Worker and organisational therapist, Dave has worked in residential child care since the early 1990s. He became head of Mulberry Bush training in 2006, leading them to three National Training Awards, in 2007, 2012 and 2021.
He was integral in developing the, award winning, ‘Foundation Degree in Therapeutic Work with Children and Young People’, with the University of the West of England, for which he is programme leader. He has also acted as a Specialist Leader in Education (SLE).
He has developed a range of training programmes that he has delivered across the UK and Europe and currently developing a supervision in schools programme, a topic he has written and presented on many times. His PhD studies, though IoE/UCL, used a case study approach to follow the lives and stories of four children and their families through the children's placements at the Mulberry Bush School.
Shaaron Powell
Shaaron is a Paediatric Occupational Therapist with extensive clinical experience working with children and young people with a range of difficulties and disabilities. Her experience includes both medical and community settings; mainstream schools, resource bases and pupil referral units. She has a broad scope of additional training including sensory integration, Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance, Sequential Oral Sensory feeding, and Coaching to name a few.
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