What to expect

If you have been offered an appointment with us, it is because your local speech and language therapist has referred you.

Appointments

Your appointment may take place at your home, your school/college, your day centre/hospice/care setting or at one of our outpatient service buildings.

Your appointments will usually last around 2 hours but may take longer. We will offer you regular breaks and can split the assessment over two appointments if needed.

Who will be there?

Your local speech and language therapist.
An AAC WEST speech and language therapist.
An AAC WEST occupational therapist.
An AAC WEST assistant practitioner.
Your school, college or day centre staff.
Your family, carers or support staff.

There may be lots of people at your appointment, please let us know if there is any way we can make it more comfortable for you.

Appointment pathway

Referral – your referral is made by your local speech and language therapist.
Initial assessment – we will assess your communication access needs (how you select what you want to say).
Equipment provision – an AAC device is loaned to you and we will set your goals together.
Review/final review – your AAC and goals will be reviewed. At the final review we hand your care back over to the local team.

What will happen in my initial assessment?

In this appointment we may:

Explain the criteria set by the NHS for specialised AAC services in England.
Talk to you and your communication partners to find out more about your communication strengths and needs.
Look at how you can use AAC. We will look at your physical movements, and try out different methods for you to access AAC.
Try out different types of AAC (these could be powered and/or paper based).
Try out different types of communication software.
Look at where to place the equipment.
Decide on an AAC option to loan to you over a period of weeks (normally loaned to you in the equipment provision appointment).
Ask you and your communication partners to think of words and phrases you may want to add to the AAC.

What will happen in my equipment provision appointment?

In this appointment we may:

Further assess some of the areas from the initial assessment.
Show you and your communication partners how to use the AAC we are loaning.
Set some goals with you and your team so that you can get the best out of your AAC trial.
Demonstrate the technical and safety aspects – this may include charging, mounting, software updates etc.
Check if there are any further words and phrases that you want adding to the AAC.
Ask you and/or your team to write down some examples of the AAC use over the coming weeks.

Sometimes we can combine the initial assessment and the equipment provision appointment.

What will happen in my review?

In this appointment we may:

Find out from you and your communication partners how the AAC trial has been going.
Talk about any issues or queries and try to problem-solve these.
Look at the progress you have made with your goals and offer more support if needed.
Suggest a longer trial period if needed.
Decide whether we are able to loan and fund the AAC long term.
Look at alternative AAC if this is needed.

Some people will just need one review – this will be their ‘final review’. See below.

What will happen in my final review?

We will discuss similar points as above under ‘Review’.

If we are able to loan AAC long term, we will:

Agree to fund and maintain your AAC.
Set some AAC goals for the future.
Decide who will update words and phrases on your AAC (if you need help with this).
Make sure you and your communication partners know who to contact if you have any problems with your AAC.
Hand your care back to your local speech and language therapist, and communication partners.
Discharge you from AAC WEST and tell you how to access re-referral in the future if needed.

If we are not able to loan AAC long term:

This may be because the timing is not right. We will discharge you, but you can be referred in the future if things change.
We may suggest you work on building skills for AAC.
Your local speech and language therapist can explore other options/services that may be able to support you.

What is an Emergency Appointment?

Emergency appointments are for people whose condition is getting worse quickly, like Motor Neurone Disease (MND). They need to be seen urgently.

AAC WEST schedules on average two emergency assessments a month, and they are scheduled for people who meet the following criteria:

Are getting worse quickly rapidly.
Can no longer able to rely on their speech.
They can no longer easily use touch devices like tablets or Lightwriters because their hand function has declined.

Referrals for emergency appointments are made by the local speech and language therapist. After this a series of 3 appointments will be made:

An initial appointment where AAC WEST will assess the person and loan equipment for trial. We aim to do this within 4-6 weeks from referral acceptance.
A review appointment that will take place 3-4 weeks later.
A second review appointment that will be scheduled 3-4 weeks after the first review appointment. This appointment may not always be needed if everything is working well at the first review.

Emergency appointments are usually done by an AAC WEST occupational therapist and assistant practitioner.

What is a mounting appointment?

In this appointment we may:

Talk about where you use your communication aid (such as at home, school or shopping).
Talk about where you use your communication aid the most (such as your wheelchair, class chair, bed or table).
Measure, build and attach the stand for your communication aid.
Show your family/carers/staff how to put on and take off the device from the mounting solution.