Please note that due to a streaming problem, there are grey boxes over some parts of the slides being presented. You may wish to download the handouts first to follow alongside the screen presentation.
For most of us, the ability to communicate thoughts, emotions and experiences contributes significantly to wellbeing and participation in everyday life. When individuals find themselves struggling and stuck in these areas, language is usually at the very heart of interventions to improve their experience (for example, coaching, talk therapy, restorative justice, Mindfulness Based Interventions). This can present significant barriers to accessing effective supports for a considerable cohort of young people with social, emotional and mental needs with unidentified or transient communication and interaction difficulties.
In this webinar, Fiona Healy O’Neill shares some key points from her research on different approaches taken by practitioners from across the children’s workforce to supporting young people to describe their emotions. She considers the contemporary understanding of the role of language in emotional development; how it may contribute to the development of a person’s sense of self; and why, sometimes, teaching social rules to follow can be tricky.
We are raising money for RADLD - the charity raising awareness about the impact of Developmental Language Disorder. If you have found this webinar useful, please consider making a donation by clicking the link here.
In her webinar, Fiona shares some of the documentary about the Cork Life Centre, "The Unteachables". To watch the rest of the documentary, you can click here:
Fiona has also very generously made available a huge collection of infographics and other resources. Click here for access.
Please remember to credit Fiona when you use these in your practice, and you might wish to make a small donation to RADLD in recognition.
Fiona Healy O’Neill teaches Wellbeing and English at the Cork Life Centre, a voluntary organization offering an alternative learning environment to young people who find themselves outside the mainstream education system.
Fiona qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist at Leeds Metropolitan University in 2005 and worked for 10 years in the NHS across community, school and CAMHs settings, specialising in ASC and DLD in older children and adolescents. She completed a Graduate Diploma in Mindfulness Based Interventions at University College Dublin in 2017, and an MSc in Language and Communication Impairment in Children at the University of Sheffield in 2020, exploring the role of sef- and other-awareness and psychological flexibility in supporting emotional expression in young people