This page provides a set of resources to help you identify potential health inequalities in the provision of speech and language therapy services.

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This resource hub provides a collection of both RCSLT and external resources to help you in identifying and addressing health inequalities in the populations you serve.

  • A health inequalities self audit tool to support you and your service to ensure you are meeting the needs of your diverse populations.
  • Information on using data to help address health inequalities – including an indicator worksheet and data resources.
  • A series of case studies illustrating good practice in delivering quality care to service users’ who may be particularly vulnerable to health inequalities (ie those from typically under-served groups)
  • Related RCSLT guidance
  • A range of external resources to give background and assist understanding about health inequalities

You may also be interested in the programme of learning from our profession wide event Anti-racism in speech and language therapy.

 

Download the health inequalities audit tool (Word)

An SLT must be able to provide personalised and equitable care to all service users who require it. Understanding an individual’s preferred language, culture, religion, family setup, attitudes toward their health status, beliefs on approaches to play, language or rehabilitation is imperative. Having well-planned, accessible, equitable, and appropriate care pathways, resources, assessment materials and workforce are all essential to mitigating health inequalities.

In addition, SLTs must avoid the risk of stereotyping or assuming that all service users from particular communities hold the same beliefs or share the same experiences. SLTs should also demonstrate inclusivity and allyship to those from under-served communities, which should be reflected in their approach and resources.

There will always be changes in how language, religion and/or culture impacts on communities and the individuals who live within them. This may be as a result of generational changes or other impacts. Therefore, SLTs must develop ‘cultural humility’ and commit to working reflexively across their careers. SLTs will need to constantly adapt their practices to best meet the communities that they work with.

Cultural humility can be defined as: “A lifelong process of self-reflection and self-critique whereby the individual not only learns about another’s culture, but one starts with an examination of her/his own beliefs and cultural identities.” (Yeager and Bauer-Wu, 2013, p 251).

A crucial part of the speech and language therapist’s role is understanding not just the ‘norms’ of development and communication breakdown in English, but also the norms of development and communication breakdown in other languages and cultures – as well as thorough understanding of the implications of food modification for those with dysphagia.

As individuals ourselves, we all have different needs (eg which languages we wish to communicate in), values, and beliefs which we hope will be explored and respected. In providing personalised care, we should apply these principles to those we work with.

When working with our diverse caseloads, it is therefore essential that we move to a more flexible approach, applying the research we have where this exists. We have to be aware that much of our research may exclude some of the more vulnerable in our society – including monolingual English-speaking communities living in areas of deprivation, those who are from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds, those who may speak no English or have English as an additional language, or those who are LGBTQ+ or have disabilities. Thus, we also have a role in contributing to the evidence-base in these areas.

 

How you can use this tool

We would encourage you to use this tool in the context of your team environment as well as in clinical excellence networks (CENs) to consider in the light of particular clinical conditions. This could also be an activity to suggest to students on placement.

This tool can be used by SLTs in the NHS and in non-NHS settings, including in research and the higher education sector, and we would encourage you to adapt it to your own settings. It can also be used in different ways. You may simply want to use the questions to guide reflection or a team discussion, or you may wish to complete a full audit by answering all questions. This may be done by using a simple yes or no, or you may wish to assign a rating e.g., a score out of 5. We welcome you to use it creatively to suit the needs of you as a clinician, team, manager or service.

It provides you with space to note your reflections, and actions for next steps. You can also edit the template so if you wish to make rating scales or similar, you can do so. We have suggested some resources you can use and you can also refer to other tools in the resources hub.

This tool should be used alongside the other resources in this hub to help find information about your population. We have included a few key resources within the tool itself, which may provide solutions to identifying information you have not considered.

You might also find the AHP Health inequalities framework helpful. It provides ideas on how to view and consider health inequalities and suggests breaking each area down into how you can improve your awareness of health inequalities, what action you can take and how you can be an advocate.

We are looking for feedback about how your team, CEN or student on placement has done this to build a picture of best practice. Please contact info@rcslt.org to share your thoughts.

As described in the audit tool and throughout the guidance, SLTs can use data to help identify and understand potential health inequalities, as a first step towards addressing them.

One aspect of this may be looking at unmet needs. This involves bringing together and comparing information about who your service is supposed to serve and who it is actually serving.

To do this, we can bring together data about the general population or community that our service targets and data about who we see in our service and see if there are differences. The worksheet below can serve as guide to help you do this. The additional resources in this section will help you gather the data that you can use to complete the worksheet.

Download the Health inequality indicator worksheet

Unmet need is just one aspect of inequality that you may wish to look at in your service. Others may include looking at whether outcomes differ for different groups of patients i.e. whether there is ‘unwarranted’ variation. RCSLT is running a project to look at how the inclusion of additional data on the RCSLT Online Outcome Tool (ROOT) might help services address health inequalities, to find out more please contact root@rcslt.org.

Gathering data about your patients

Your service may already be collecting or have access to data that will help you to monitor potential health inequalities e.g. ethnicity, language profile, pupil premium. If you work for an NHS Trust or Health Board, it is likely that there will be a central team of data analysts who you should be able to support your service with accessing existing data collected through electronic patient records.

In other cases, new processes may be needed to gather this data from service users. Collecting personal data can be complex and sometimes sensitive for patients, especially with regard to ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. Below are some key principles to support this:

  • Self-reporting is the most effective way of asking about an individual’s identity.
  • Personal data should be collected in agreement and collaboration with the patient and if the identity, such as ethnicity, of a patient is unknown, it should not be assumed or inferred.
  • It is important that services consult local policies and advice regarding obtaining this information.
  • Your organisation or local area may have someone with responsibility for health inequalities, who you can approach for support. You may also find the RCSLT guidance on Information Governance useful.

It is important to think about why you are collecting data and how it will be recorded and used: data should not just be collected ‘in case’. We collect different types of information for different purposes.

As discussed throughout this guidance, SLTs need to ask service users and their families detailed questions to ensure they understand their experience and social factors that affect them and can provide personalised care. However, to produce information that is useful for data analysis purposes, it may be necessary to distil this more complex information into broader categories or codes.

For example, an SLT would want to collect a range of information about the language profile of a multilingual family for the purposes of quality care, but in terms of data analysis, the fact that the family require an interpreter to access services may be an adequate data item, enabling comparison between groups who do or do not require an interpreter.

Useful resources

See also: External resources and background reading 

Finding data about your local population

Data about the population is collected by different organisations in different ways across the UK. We have gathered some key resources here to get you started but there is a lot of information available from different organisations. What is most useful to your service will vary depending on where you are based and what factors you are interested in.

Top tips:

  • Think about what geographical area you are interested in e.g. Integrated Care Board, local authority, custom area
  • Check the source of the data (e.g. Census) and how up-to-date it is.
  • Ensure that you know who the data relates to e.g. households / adult population / children
  • Consider the questions and categories used, especially if you are comparing different datasets e.g. NHS services may use slightly different categories to describe ethnicity from the ones used in the Census.

See also: Assessing needs of local population

 

UK-wide

Nomis
Uses multiple sources of information (including historic census data) to provide statistics relating to population, households and society. Labour market profiles include data for an area on population, employment, earnings etc from a range of sources. Some reports at a smaller area level are only available for England and Wales.

Office for National Statistics
Provides a range of statistics relating to economy, population and society at national, regional and local levels.

Open Geography Portal
Useful resource for boundary maps etc including of Integrated Care Boards / Local Health Boards.

England and Wales

Census 2021
Can use mapping to look at local authority districts, smaller areas within this or build a custom area profile (See this handy how to guide). You can also create a custom dataset with the area and variables you are interested in and download this as a spreadsheet.

A huge range of data is available (being released in phases) including:

  • how people identify themselves including ethnicity, religion, language, sexual orientation
  • information about Education, Work and Housing that may act as indicators for poverty and other factors that can impact on people’s health and inequality
  • how people rate their general health and whether they have a disability.

England

Local Authority Health Profiles
Interactive maps and charts providing an overview of health for each local authority in England. Pull together existing information in one place on a range of indicators for local populations e.g. life expectancy, ill health, behavioural risk factors, infant mortality. Intended as ‘conversation starters’ to help local government and health services make plans to improve the health of their local population and reduce health inequalities.
Check specific data sources e.g. if using 2011 census data, may be able to access 2021 data elsewhere.

Local Health
Small area mapping tool, to enable within-area comparisons.
Data sources are the same as for Fingertips but may present the data differently to ensure that small numbers are suppressed and will use the appropriate statistical method for indicators based on small numbers.

Analytics tools from Office for Health Improvement and Disparities

  • Segment tool – information on life expectancy and causes of death at different local levels (e.g. local authority, integrated care board) and highlights inequality within and between different areas.
  • Specific tools relating to impacts of COVID-19

English indices of deprivation 2019 (IMD 2019)
Measure of relative levels of deprivation in 32,844 small areas or neighbourhoods, called Lower-layer Super Output Areas.

Northern Ireland

Census 2021 – Area Explorer
A range of population data for different local government districts, such as language, ethnicity and housing.

Northern Ireland Multiple Deprivation Measure 2017 (NIMDM2017)
Provides a mechanism for ranking areas within Northern Ireland in the order of the most deprived to the least deprived. Includes interactive maps.

Health inequalities statistics
Examination of each indicator within the NI health and social care inequalities monitoring system (HSCIMS) at regional and sub-regional levels.

Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency
Range of other statistics and visualisations relating to population, health, education etc.

Scotland

Scotland’s Census – Area overviews
Search by postcode, town or council to view information about population identity, health, education and more.

Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020 (SIMD 2020v2)
Relative measure of deprivation across 6,976 small areas (called data zones)

Scotland’s Official Statistics
Explore a range of other datasets, including by different areas.

Wales

StatsWales
Brings together multiple data sources to provide a range of information relating to population, including:

  • population numbers by age (2021 census)
  • Welsh speakers
  • information on housing, education, health and more.

Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) 2019
Designed to identify the small areas of Wales that are the most deprived.

We have brought together a collection of case studies showcasing good practice in meeting the needs of under-served groups and delivering quality care to service users who may be particularly vulnerable to health inequalities.

The case studies show how SLTs can support a service user/their families’ engagement with speech and language therapy and other health services and include examples of culturally sensitive care, use of trauma-informed approaches, service-level changes and the role of SLTs in wider health promotion.

Speech and language therapists should always take an evidence-based approach to practice (HCPC, 2014) and should always triangulate the findings from research, with clinical expertise and service user preferences.

The case studies illustrate successful examples of speech and language therapy practice, but it should be noted that each service user is an individual and it should not be considered that the care exemplified in case study is suitable for all people who meet the descriptions given.

We’ve developed a template with members to encourage SLTs to share their stories. Download the case study template to submit your case study.

Members should refer to the following pieces of relevant RCSLT clinical guidance:

 

Additional supporting resources and background reading

The links below were accessed on 20 January 2023. If a link no longer works please do let us know at info@rcslt.org.

 

 

Organisations with an interest in health inequalities / sources of information

 

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In this section

Addressing health inequalities: the role of speech and language therapy

What are health inequalities?

Health inequalities case studies

Examples of how SLTs have addressed health inequalities