Jobs for speech and language therapists

Here in the UK the last few years has been difficult if you work within the NHS.  Many health professionals have taken early retirement or had a career change because of the pressures put on them.  This is due to money saving initiatives put in place by managers.  Instead of redundancies many posts have been frozen and the remaining workforce has been expected to deliver the same service. Speech and language therapists in all specialisms have been affected by this.  In fact some departments are undergoing restructure and therapists face having their jobs re-graded.  It is likely that they face a pay cut.

If you are a new graduate the chances are that you haven’t been able to find a job.  When I qualified there was a wide choice of jobs you could apply for and very little competition.  Where jobs do come up there can be twenty or more applicants.  Some graduates are being forced to take assistant jobs just to keep their skills and knowledge up.  However there are a growing number of newly qualified therapists who are working in supermarkets and wondering if they will ever find a job.  This is an incredible waste of knowledge- especially when the NHS has paid to train them up! 

At the other end of the scale being promoted at work is no longer as easy as it was.  In comparison to other allied health professionals, speech and language therapists are quite expensive.  This means that there are fewer jobs at a more specialist level.  In terms of career development this is bad news.  If you want to progress now it likes more likely that you’ll have  to take a job in management and move away from the clinical.  Some therapists have left the country and headed to Australia or New Zealand for better opportunities.   

Speech and language therapy can be a really rewarding and interesting job but the pressures of the working environment can impair this.  Enthusiastic new graduates can’t even find jobs and are becoming increasingly jaded about whether they will ever be able to embark on their chosen career.  Students looking to become speech and language therapists may now be put off by the lack of career structure and ill feeling some therapists have. Will the situation change?  There are massive changes afoot in the NHS at the moment and hopefully the situation will improve.  As practicing speech and language therapists we have a responsibility to ensure that we encourage people into the profession and to provide the appropriate support to newly qualified speechies.  We may need to think outside the box in order to meet the needs of therapists and clients alike.  

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