LouiseMc

Wife, Mum of boys, Speech & Language Therapist Southern Trust. All views are my own.

[London Paediatric Dysphagia CEN @LondonPDCEN]

Tomorrow is Swallowing Awareness Day!

A chance of us to raise awareness about the impact of eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties and how speech and language therapists can help. #SwallowAware2025

@RCSLT has created some great posters that explains more.

[LouiseMc @louisemcaSLT]

@RCSLTNI @robbeorn Such a great idea and resource hopefully all schools should be able to implement 👏

[RCSLT Northern Ireland @RCSLTNI]

Today we’re thrilled to have launched an exciting new project, Buddy Chat, aimed at supporting school children to be kind caring communicators. Teachers can access the new resource from today here: https://t.co/0AznfF0zWD

[LouiseMc @louisemcaSLT]

@ronan_omalley @TMIrelandHelp Yes me too got to a loading screen then nothing!

[Hannah Roberts @HRobertsSLT]

Would really recommend all dysphagia SLTs read this paper to gain a more holistic understanding of the risks associated with being NBM. Supporting informed decision making with our patients means we ourselves have to have the knowledge & understanding to inform them.

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

Today I heard from a parent that their son was terribly upset when he got covid, because it would ruin his 100% attendance record. At the end of the year, those with 100% get book tokens & certificates in assembly. She mentioned it in passing, she obviously didn’t think it was a big deal. It was just how school worked, and last year her son had got the award.

Here’s why policies like that should stop.

What’s the problem, you might think, with rewarding those who turn up day after day? Surely it’s just a nice little treat to recognise their commitment? And book tokens! How worthy. What’s the problem with free books for kids who take school seriously enough to make it in every day?

As with all reward systems, however, we don’t think enough about those who don’t get the reward and the effect on them.

Who are these kids? Well, it’s the children with serious illness - the mum then went on to tell me that one girl in his class has leukaemia, for example. Or the disabled child. Or the child with overwhelming anxiety. Or the child who became homeless with their mum due to domestic violence and has to go to the shelter in the night, and then doesn’t make it to school the next day. Or even the child whose dad died and who had a day off to attend the funeral.

It’s the kids who find school most difficult and who have the most challenges who struggle to attend.

What happens to them when everyone else goes up to get their book tokens? They sit in assembly watching, and they are punished. They are punished because the absence of a reward acts as a punishment for them. It’s a public punishment too, everyone knows that they didn’t make the grade. No free books for them. Tough.

Whenever there are rewards, the flip side is punishment. When we reward one person, the others are punished by the absence. When we reward someone one year, and then not the next, that again the absence acts as a punishment. It makes them feel bad.

Of course, we know this. We know that children feel bad when they don’t get something and others do. This is in fact pretty well how rewards are meant to work. They are meant to motivate. The idea is that children will try harder to get the reward.

So what’s the problem? The problem is that 100% attendance isn’t about trying harder. It’s largely about luck, particularly at primary school. Luck not to get ill, luck to have a stable family, luck to be the kind of person who doesn’t find school overwhelmingly stressful. Luck to be the sort of person for whom life is a bit easier, in fact.

Rewards for 100% attendance reward the lucky, and by doing so punish the unlucky. The lucky feel good and the unlucky feel bad. And that has other consequences. Because making those who find school attendance hard feel bad is very unlikely to make them more able to attend. They are already struggling, and now they’re being punished for it.

It contributes to anxiety, because children are aware of the consequences of not getting 100%, and some of them will become really anxious about it. For others, it will contribute to their anger and their feelings that they aren’t valued as much as others.

So yes, the proud children up the front of assembly can’t see a problem, and their parents think it’s ‘just a nice gesture’, but it’s so easy to ignore the effect on the least advantaged. We celebrate the winners and the losers are invisible, shamed into silence. The winners assume that the losers deserved to lose - they say that they worked hard for their awards, and the losers couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed and so why should they get book tokens?

This happens again and again in our education system, and that’s why I keep on banging this drum. Every intervention should be evaluated for its impact on losers as well as winners. It’s not enough to pretend they could all be winners if they just tried hard enough.

Sometimes people tell me that the attendance awards helped them learn that everyone is good at different things, because whilst they didn’t get attendance awards, they did well at other things and got awards for music or creative writing. Which is nice for them, but again, let’s think about the losers. For it’s not true that in a school context everyone is good at something. It’s not true that everyone gets awards somewhere. Some children learn that they aren’t good at anything. Not even turning up.

These reward systems come up often when I talk to young people who are disillusioned and burnt out by school. The significance of book tokens goes beyond the money. That’s why it doesn’t work when parents say they’ll buy the book tokens instead, to try and lessen the pain of not getting the reward. Those book tokens, awarded in public in assembly, signify approval, status, validation - and to those who don’t get them, they signify the opposite

[LouiseMc @louisemcaSLT]

@RTELateLateShow Give me tickets please 🙏

[The Late Late Show @RTELateLateShow]

Paddy may not have tickets but we’re giving some away 👀👀 #LateLate

[LouiseMc @louisemcaSLT]

Bonding with baby before birth and beyond. Very insightful webinar highlighting the importance of infant mental health in northern ireland. #bondingwithbaby #MentalHealthAwarenessDay #mentalhealthstrategy @SouthernHSCT

[LouiseMc @louisemcaSLT]

Bonding with baby before birth and beyond. Very insightful webinar highlighting the importance of infant mental health in northern ireland. #bondingwithbaby #MentalHealthAwarenessDay #mentalhealthstrategy @SouthernHSCT

[RCSLT Northern Ireland @RCSLTNI]

#AHPCollaboration @SouthernHSCT We strive to use a child-centred approach for our children and their families by involving them at every step of their journey with us
@explainedsnow @BelfastTrust @CEO_SHSCT @GeraldineTeagu5 @CAWells78 @jam6763 @thecsp @theRCOT @cmcanuff

[RCSLT Northern Ireland @RCSLTNI]

If you would like more information about Childhood Stroke, please visit https://t.co/sgD6Nni2qq
@TheStrokeAssoc @cbituk @BrainInjMatters @thecsp @theRCOT @GeraldineTeagu5 @PaulineMcMullan @SouthernHSCT @healthdpt @louiseC333 @PJMoSLT

[RCSLT Northern Ireland @RCSLTNI]

#MySLTDay Let’s hear from Joanne about a typical day carrying out feeding assessments within the team @RCSLTNI @SouthernHSCT
@BDA_Dietitians @LondonPDCEN @jmortonQI @louiseC333 @oneillbriege @cfearonslt @cmcanuff @HilaryMcfaul @CAWells78 @jam6763 @explainedsnow

[RCSLT Northern Ireland @RCSLTNI]

Welcome to the Paediatric Rapid Response Team (RRT) @SouthernHSCT Twitter Takeover.
Let’s hear more from Orla, SLT within the team @CEO_SHCT @cmcanuff @louise_mcdowell @hiliarymcfaul @jam6763 @CAwells78 @healthdpt @heather_trouton @theTheCSP @TheRCOT @GeraldineTeagu5

[LouiseMc @louisemcaSLT]

@RCSLTNI @SouthernHSCT Good luck girls! Looking forward to following!

[RCSLT Northern Ireland @RCSLTNI]

Tune in tomorrow for our takeover by SLTs from the @SouthernHSCT Paediatric Rapid Response Team and Paediatric Feeding Service.

They will showcase their working day alongside their multidisciplinary medical colleagues. #MySLTDay

[BBC News NI @BBCNewsNI]

Northern Ireland will be the only part of the UK not to provide every baby with free books. https://t.co/AfRnv18WgY

[LouiseMc @louisemcaSLT]

@HilaryMcfaul Congratulations Hilary, just lovely news and your ring looks fab! Enjoy all the celebrations!

[LouiseMc @louisemcaSLT]

I just entered @AutoTrader_UK’s monthly️ #ElectricCarGiveaway & you can too! This month’s prize is a Nissan LEAF Tekna worth over £31k! It’s free to enter & you have until 31st August. All information (including Ts&Cs) can be found here: https://t.co/x1Y7Nddzqt

[LouiseMc @louisemcaSLT]

@cfearonslt @southerntrust @louiseC333 @rcslt_bulletin Brilliant experience for the students! Hope they enjoyed the taste testing ☕️ 🥤