AAC Evidence Base Research Project: March 2013 Update

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AAC Dissemination Seminars

We are working with key partners on a series of joint dissemination events aimed primarily at commissioners and heads of specialist AAC services. These will take place in England, Scotland and Wales in April and May. Our partners are the DfE consortium leads in England, Susan Shandley from the ‘A Right to Speak’ project in Scotland, and Jeff Morris in Wales.

Katie Holmes will also be one of the presenters at the Belfast Roadshow on 1st May so do come and listen to her talk if you’d like to find out more about the research findings. There will be further dissemination activities after the end of the project.

Research Report Available Soon

The research project is now entering its last three months and the research teams are very busy making final revisions to the research reports. The final research report will be available at the end of April. It will give an overview of all the strands of the project:

  • Mapping AAC service provision in the UK
  • Determining prevalence of need for AAC in the UK
  • AACknowledge website
  • Case Study database
  • Research Involvement Network

There will also be more detailed reports by the University of Sheffield (in collaboration with Barnsley Hospital) and Manchester Metropolitan University. All the reports will be available as PDFs on the research project page of the Communication Matters website. We will also print a limited number of copies of the overview report.

www.AACknowledge.org.uk

We continue to receive some great feedback on the AACknowledge website. Please do have a look at www.AACknowledge.org.uk and let us know what you think. You can use the site feedback form, or tweet @Katie_JH or @Comm_Matters .

Project Background

The AAC Evidence Base research project is a three-year project funded by the National Lottery through Big Lottery Fund. Communication Matters is leading the project and working with three research partners: University of Sheffield, Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Manchester Metropolitan University.

The project will produce fundamental evidence of the need for, and provision of, AAC which can be used to improve services across the UK. It will provide access to current knowledge in an online AAC Evidence Base which will present information in a variety of accessible formats.

For more information…