Ruth Jones Speech and Language Therapy

14/11/2025

The clinical excellence network was so fabulous - such a joy to be amongst therapists in a space to dive into our work, with those who are open, reflective and honest.

I had such a buzzy head with all the thoughts from listening to the presentations. For me I took away how important the perspective is of readers of our reports, the individuals and their families, the narrative we write matters. To that end how we focus on strengths but offer balance and capture challenges too.

What I also came away thinking was how much we need to dismantle the systems - challenge the expectations of others, such as systems that say ‘we have to’ capture deficits and scores, but says who? Where in clinical guidance does it say that? What is more harmful?

Just a dash of things floating around my mind. Did you go? What did you take away to ponder? Or even immediate shifts you’re going to make?

✨ What a brilliant, thought-provoking day at Friday’s NDA CEN event on neurodivergent-affirming report writing ✨

We heard from four incredible SLT speakers - Beth Featherbe, Fatima Bint-Hanif, Sue Moon, and Ruth Jones - who generously shared their reflections on writing reports that truly honour and support neurodivergent children and young people.

From tensions between the ADOS, DSM and neurodiversity-affirming practice, to reflections on using the MIGDAS, each speaker brought real-world insights and practical food for thought.

This community continues to challenge, inspire and evolve - and if you’re a Speech and Language Therapist, we highly recommend joining the NDA CEN. Their events are consistently insightful, grounded, and affirming. 💬

✨ And exciting news for 2026: NDA CEN will be opening up beyond SLTs - so if you’re a professional working in ND-affirming spaces (or know someone who is), keep an eye out! 👀

Follow .cen to find out more!

Let’s keep learning, unlearning, and growing together ❤️

13/11/2025

Yay! 🙌 Work totally worth mentioning.

09/11/2025

Recently, a professional wrote that presuming competence is dangerous because it leads us to overlook vulnerability. That by presuming competence, we fail to protect, fail to offer help, fail to teach and assume people already know skills they have not yet learned. The professional’s stance confuses competence with current performance and support with correction or training.

This is not presuming competence. This is neglect.

Presuming competence is not an instructional strategy nor a belief about skill level. Presuming competence doesn’t mean assuming the person already has every skill but not demanding of someone to prove their right to access before we are willing to help them learn.

To presume competence is to recognise that a person’s understanding, agency, emotional depth and capacity for meaning-making exist regardless of whether they can demonstrate those things in neuronormative ways.
We do not treat a person as less intelligent because they communicate, learn or express differently.
We should assume cognitive presence, even when expression is delayed, non-linear or happens through non-speech communication.
We must provide access, support, scaffolding and alternative communication methods without requiring someone to prove they deserve them.

Presuming competence is an ethical stance that does not reduce someone to what is observable, nor treat one's humanity as being contingent on performance.

Moreso, vulnerability and competence are not opposites... A person can be deeply vulnerable and competent at the same time. Presuming competence allows us to support that vulnerability with dignity, instead of controlling it through fear of what might happen if we get it wrong.

Bottom line is that we don’t presume finished ability. We presume capacity, presence and potential and we support the person in accessing and expressing it.

03/11/2025

This isn’t a certificate, or an end goal. The work is constantly involving and shifting, we learn and know more we do things differently, and learning never stops.

So it’s a constant road of travel, and what’s so important is finding people to travel with. I am forever thankful for meeting and collaborating and continuing to connect and learn from .talks.uk and

It can feel really confusing, hard to know who to ask about what, brining clinical judgment alongside research and practice based evidence, listening and learning from lived experience.

Learning about intersectionality and how key that is to affirming practice. Finding key questions to ask, understanding the impact of systems and how we can dismantle them.

All the areas that ableism sits in plain sight and also hides behind these systems, and internalised values and perspectives we might not even know we hold.

I’d love to help you on your exploration by starting conversations from the book Neurodiversity Affirming Practice for Speech and Language Therapists.

Or, look into my small group supervisions, there are some spaces left for courses starting in November and December - look at my website.

31/10/2025

Just because October comes to an end, doesn’t mean the AAC work stops.

Communication partners keep:
- learning about AAC
- offering opportunities for meaningful communication
- following the AAC users lead
- giving time for communication
- model without expectation
- advocating for inclusive communication spaces

AAC users keep
- growing their skills
- advocating for inclusive communication spaces
- developing safe networks to authentically be themselves
- grow their AAC tools

And we all must keep championing inclusive communication spaces and honour all forms of this wonderful connecting experience we know to be communication.

Use this space to make a pledge, what are you going to carry through the rest of the months to next October?

Let me know in the comments.

28/10/2025

Loving the inclusion from Joanna Grace too - this will be so valuable.

This year's expanded guide features an even bigger range of experiences and neurodivergent identities.

From monotropic minds, to sensory challenges, to the experiences of people from different cultural backgrounds, we hope there's something useful for almost everyone!

Thank you Joanna Grace Tsp for creating a brand new section all about supporting people with profound and multiple learning disabilities / profound intellectual and multiple disabilities during the festive period!

It's completely free and will be available to download from https://jadefarrington.substack.com when it's released next month. Enter your email via the Substack link to receive it in your inbox on release day.

28/10/2025

I see this SO often - and it’s not good. Unlearning these patterns takes time, and it can often come from quite difficult emotional places for individuals who’ve learnt that communication is about control and compliance.

It is usually communication that’s been taught in a rough cycle that goes:
- adult has thing child wants
- adult withholds thing
- child reaches for thing
- adult says no and then models or uses hand over hand to point to a picture/push a button
- child gets thing, adults celebrate ‘communication’

So breaking it down, a child here has clearly communicated by a reach they want it, adults know they like it, but that isn’t seen as communication, their reach isn’t honoured.

So then the child is confused, they’ve shown someone what they want, very physically clearly communicated, yet, it’s been rejected, even sometimes with a ‘no, you’ve got to show me’ (which they just did!) or a take of their hand to bat a button, or move them to an isolated finger to point to a picture.

All this serves to do, is breakdown a child’s sense of safety.

Instead, we can connect, offer their object, when a child reaches, YOU push the button ‘I want it’ or point ‘car!’ On a symbol board.

I’ve pulled together a document with references about how great aided language is, and why we might think about it instead of things that ground themselves in behavioural approaches.

Want a copy? Comment ‘joy’ and I’ll send you the link.

26/10/2025

This is a big problem for lots of children and young people. Where the focus on teaching communication lies heavily on requesting and generating expected responses.

The focus is on teaching for tangible wants, that are given when the communication is made. This can be with holding until a child says please, or exchanges something. It can be a pause and move on if they don’t do something.

We then have to do a lot of ‘unlearning’ with a child, because they see communication tools as an expectation and demand, they tap and point because they don’t understand what’s happening is about connecting through language; not rewarding a behaviour.

For some this unlearning is swift and full of joy, when they realise they can share their opinions and comments, advocate and tell stories. When access to more words means so much.

For others, this entrenched pattern takes a lot longer for them to shift. It doesn’t mean we give up, it just means we get curious harder, we tune in harder, we enable their safety more in our interactions, and validate and pause.

Joyful communication can be in asking for something and getting what you want. But it can also be in so so much more.

I’d love to know your experiences of ‘stuck’ communication, or what was that first joyful moment of communicating that wasn’t a request?

Let me know in the comments. ⬇️