60 seconds with…Rachel Moitra, speech and language lead for children's community therapies
We chat to Rachel Moitra, speech and language lead with the children’s therapies community team about the challenges the team face and their plans for the future.
Tell me about your team and what you do.
I am part of the community therapies team – specifically the speech and language therapy team for children in the Tower Hamlets community. We work with children and families aged 0-19 with a variety of needs and disabilities. We work closely with schools, youth workers and social workers.
My role in particular is to do with deafness. I lead a smaller specialist team within children’s therapies which supports children affected by hearing loss.
There’s a high proportion of deaf children in Tower Hamlets thanks to a range of factors – and there’s a big need for the community support.
What do you hope to get from the Outstanding Place to Work programme? What challenges do you currently face as a team?
We discussed applying as the whole team – we are going through the process of integrating our teams in a way that supports children and young families better. The outstanding place to work programme will look at how we can support staff through that change with challenges and increased demand on all our services.
Referrals are much higher than they have been but our resources are the same. It’s a challenge how we create a satisfying working environment for our staff to thrive.
Schools are also facing resourcing issues – so it’s an ongoing challenge for us to continue to deliver the same standard of service.
Through the programme, we want to come up with some great ideas of how to support staff – and how to empower staff to become great leaders – so that work is more satisfying and enjoyable. It’s important to get the best for children and their families and finding ways to do that within the constraints of our budgets.
What are your hopes for the future?
Continuing to develop and create a team where we support each other – we want to be a happy, supportive, engaging and fun team.
We’ve won awards in the past for our work and we want to continue to be a great place to work and a place where our staff can develop themselves and enjoy coming to work.
About the community therapies team
The community therapies team offer a comprehensive range of services to children and young families in Tower Hamlets.
They have recently won an award for the children’s community speech and language therapy service and the head of children’s therapies Anne Corbett was recognised.