23TRA220 Understanding and Supporting Students who Stammer in your School

Date:       Monday, 27th March 2023
Time:       7 pm - 8 pm
Venue:    Online via Zoom

TARGET AUDIENCE: Teachers and SNAs

Learning outcomes:
This training will provide teachers and SNAs with greater awareness, knowledge and confidence in supporting students who stammer at school. Content includes:

• What is stammering and what causes it?
• When to consider discussing a referral to SLT with parents?
• Impact of stammering within the educational context.
• Stammering and the continuum of support.
• Developing your toolbox to support students who stammer at school, including neurodiversity-affirmative practice, reasonable accommodations and helpful strategies that support confident communication and participation.

Bio of Presenter: Marie Halpin, (Senior Speech and Language therapist - SLT)

Marie has over 10 years of experience working as a SLT. She has a wealth of expertise across a wide age range, and has worked within education settings, clinic services and specialist services. Her areas of clinical expertise include Autism, Stammering and Education, with a particular interest in neurodivergent-affirming supports.

Her background includes a number of specialist SLT roles, including working within a neurodevelopmental-diagnostic team, mainstream schools, special classes and special schools. She also worked as a specialist at the Michael Palin Centre (UK Specialist Centre for Stammering) for many years. She is trained in the delivery of a range of therapies, including Palin Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, Palin Family Communication Skills Therapy, Attention Autism, Solution-focused brief therapy, CBT, Lego Therapy, Shape-Coding, Intensive Interaction, SCERTS, Hanen More Than Words, Hanen TalkAbility, Lámh QQI etc and has experience implementing and integrating these into educational settings. Marie regularly presents at conferences and trainings internationally and has co-authored research, as well as having contributed to other publications.

Within recent years, Marie worked for the NCSE, including the University of Limerick/NCSE National SLT service in Ireland. She led on national SLCN training/CPD for teachers at primary and post primary level and provided sustained in-school support. She has extensive experience in delivering training and working collaboratively with schools to build their capacity to support students with speech, language and communication needs. She continues to work in Ireland in private practice, offering supervision, training, and therapy.