The Compass Centre
The Compass Centre was established in 2000 as the in-house Speech and Language Therapy clinic building on the skills and experience of the staff in the Department of Language and Communication Science at City University.
All the activities in the Compass Centre are required to support the three principles contained in our mission statement; namely, to offer a range of cutting-edge intervention services for clients, to provide an excellent quality of supervision for speech and language therapy students and to promote the development of well-designed research. We aim to develop clinical practice and ways of delivering services by exploring the interface between advances in theoretical knowledge and the changing demands of the health, educational and social contexts in which speech and language therapy services operate.
What are the key purposes of the Compass Centre?
-
To explore developments and innovations in clinical practice
-
To extend and make explicit the process of learning in clinical education
-
To generate clinical questions and evaluate clinical evidence
-
To raise awareness of innovative clinical practice and to consult with professional colleagues regarding the application of innovative models in the professional context.
What does the Compass Centre offer?
Clinical activities across a range of client groups including:
-
People who stammer
-
People with special educational needs
-
Children and adolescents with specific language impairment
-
People with Parkinson's disease (using Lee Silverman Voice Training)
-
Children with hearing impairment
-
Children with speech impairments
-
A range of intervention styles include individual and group work, direct work with clients and indirect work with carers
Who leads the activities?
Each clinical activity is led by a specialist, registered Speech and Language Therapist who is a member of staff within the Department of Language and Communication Science, together with other specialist colleagues as appropriate (for example clinical audiologist, clinical linguist)
Student speech and language therapists provide the core staffing for clinical services under the supervision of the relevant specialist Speech and Language Therapist. All students involved in the Compass Centre participate as part of their clinical education programme, which contributes to the award of either a BSc or Post-graduate Diploma/MSc in Speech and Language Therapy. Successful completion of these Programmes allows students to become registered Speech and Language Therapists. The clinical education programme in the Department of Language and Communication Science at City University, London is the largest programme in the UK.
How is the Compass Centre to be accessed?
The services offered at the Compass Centre are typically 'tertiary' level services, that is, where an individual is referred having already been known to a speech and language therapy service. Several activities occur in collaboration with local speech and language therapy services. However, in keeping with speech and language therapy access policies generally, the Compass Centre will consider direct referrals from clients and/or their families and carers.
Commissioners of speech and language therapy services and other service 'purchasers' with a budget for speech and language therapy are also able to secure Compass Centre services for individuals or groups within their area of responsibility.
Finally, speech and language therapy services wishing to use the consultancy services provided by Compass Centre can enter directly into a consultancy arrangement.