Union warning over cuts to speech therapists

Eight speech and language therapists (SaLT) and three SaLT assistants working across Sure Start children's centres, schools and community clinics across south London will lose their jobs.

The Unite union warned that the cuts will have a huge impact on vulnerable children and will impact directly on the community they live in. Speech and language therapists from Southwark have voted to strike over the plans on 3 February.

Unite regional officer Richard Munn said, 'By removing funding to the posts that offer this support, many vulnerable people in Southwark will find it even harder to access early intervention therapies and feel they are effectively being abandoned by this government, in the year when communication was supposed to be promoted and not attacked.'

Mr Munn said that he had heard from sources within Southwark that further cuts to speech and language services could be made.

Jummy Dawodu, associate director of Specialist Children's Services at NHS Southwark, said, 'We are disappointed that a strike has been called, as we have been very open in describing the possible funding difficulties the service finds itself in and the reasons for it. These centre on the ending of a time-limited grant that supported the development of children's centres including speech and language therapy. Staff were employed on fixed-term contracts and these are coming to an end.

'We are working with the staff affected in seeking alternative employment. We need to give staff every opportunity to find other employment in the worst-case scenario that we receive no funding at all. We remain hopeful that this is not entirely the case.

'We have been working hard planning what we would do if no extra funding is found and we have to change the way we deliver our speech and language therapy service. Our focus will be on providing the best possible service to those children who need it most.'