Responding to calls for cuts in your team

Few speech and language services have suffered redundancies during the recent period of financial difficulties in the NHS. Nonetheless, many SLT services have been asked to freeze posts for the time being.

Cuts to your team may not necessitate cuts to your services. You may be able to use your human resources differently to achieve similar results. One way of doing this is to look at the mix of skills and experience in your team and, for example, make more use of support workers . You might also look at the input - or the potential for input - from NHS staff from outside your team.

• Skills mix

Another idea is to invest in training for people who work with your client group but are not employed in the NHS. This means that an organisation other than the NHS is supporting treatment and carrying much of the cost of providing care.