The floor and many of the tables in the community room were covered in toys which the children who attended really enjoyed playing with as their parents chatted to and received advice from our brilliant Speech & Language Therapist, Ellen from Cariad Speech Therapy.

Furthermore, it was great to see the parents offering tips, advice and support to each other.

We hope to arrange further “Drop In” sessions in future – watch this space!

This is only possible due to the generosity of Saluto’s supporters which include Chester Business Club and EET Fuels who are celebrating 100 years of Stanlow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4H4V7i-3OQ

The project will provide Speech Therapy to families who have adopted children. Sadly, kids who are adopted frequently have communication difficulties due to the neglect they have experienced previously.

The therapy which Saluto funds – which will be delivered by the excellent team at Lifelong Language – involves both 1-to-1 and group sessions.

We have partnered with the Adoption Matters charity and adoption service to identify the families who would most benefit from this project.

We are very grateful to the many supporters who provided funding to enable this project to be undertaken including those who voted for Saluto to receive support from the Tesco Community Grants scheme using the blue tokens at the supermarket’s Chester stores.

The therapy will have a transformative impact on the children. It will enable them to better express themselves when they are with their family & friends. They will also become more engaged when they are at school which will improve their job prospects in the long-term. Generally, the aim is for them to have happier lives.

With his cousin John Fergus on standby to step in if there was a technical failure, Dave Williams – Chair of Saluto – provided an overview of the charity before the evening of marvellous poetry began.

The poetry underlined how powerful verbal communication can be!

Members of the Chester Poets Society generously donated £150 to Saluto.

This is my speech…

https://youtu.be/4a4G58shsSY

It was told by Dennis Bevan, the Headmaster of the Special Needs School I attended in Winsford. To be honest, as a teenager, I ended up bored with the tale as he seemed to repeat it during Assembly every few months but, in hindsight, I fully understand why Mr Bevan was so keen to keep recounting the fable to his young audience with their wide range of disabilities.

The story was set on a farm one scorching hot Summer’s day where 2 frogs were looking for somewhere to cool down. Eventually, they found a churn full of milk and hopped in. They had a fabulous time splashing around in the cold white liquid.

As the setting sun began to relinquish the heat from the early evening, they decided it was time to head home to their pond but found they couldn’t get enough purchase to leap up and reach the rim of the churn to pull themselves free.

They swam round and round for ages looking for a way out. Pausing now and then to hurl them towards the elusive edge at the top of the churn. Before long, their muscles began to ache; they were exhausted.

One of the frogs gave up and sank into the milk.

The other one carried on, even though it was getting harder and harder for him to keep swimming. The frog decided to try once more to launch himself towards the rim, despite the fact that he was certain he was doomed to fail. It was his only chance, he wasn’t going to give in and die.

However, this time when he made his leap the “milk” had become strangely firm and he easily jumped to the rim and pulled himself out – had the creature been a food scientist rather than an amphibian, the frog would have realised that by swimming around it turned the milk to butter which supported his weight.

When that happened, it must have seemed amazing to the frog – a miracle!

Although that is just a story, looking back at my life there have been many occasions when “luck” has come my way after my perseverance triggered events which turned good seemingly hopeless situations. It encourages me to keep going with my Speech Therapy when it becomes a grind!

The scheme is called Easyfundraising and over 7,500 retailers are signed up to donate to good causes chosen by their customers.

Enrolled to Easyfundraising are many household names such as Currys, John Lewis, Sainsburys and Marks & Spencer.

Once signed up via the above link you can search for retailers who will donate to Saluto at www.easyfundraising.org.uk or install a browser extension from that site which will provide an alert whenever you visit a website that is part of the scheme.

The donations by the retailers can be significant – 5% of the value of the items in your basket at some online stores – so it has the potential to have a big impact on Saluto and does not cost the shoppers a penny.

For some time, I have been wriggling into bed on my own and connecting the battery charger to my powered wheelchair by grasping the plug between my feet. I prefer to sleep in the dark but it goes without saying, plugging in a charger is not that easy with the lights off!

In my bed, I used to have a remote-control switch that turned off the light but kept rolling over on to it and breaking it!

Another solution was needed… so I bought an Echo Dot and a smart light to go on my bedside table. I was able to control Alexa using the speech synthesizer on my pc although as that is in the lounge, I had to use the phone app to put the light on a timer so that it went off after I was in bed.

The Echo Dot still gets plenty of use as I enjoy playing music and listening to radio stations on the device. I set up my favourite Alexa commands on my Grid 3 communication software so that the synthesized voice would speak them at the click of a mouse.

With Cerebral Palsy, my body’s motor controls are far from consistent so the time it takes for me to go to the loo, pull off my socks, get into bed and plug in the ‘chair’s charger can vary if I can’t get my limbs to quite do what I want them to. Knowing that my bedside light was on a timer and I would be plunged into darkness if there were significant hitches added to the pressure to the detriment of my co-ordination.

I need to explain at this point that I do not have the dexterity in my fingers to operate a smartphone so I couldn’t take it to bed to turn off the light. I control the ‘phone via a giant toe-operated keyboard that sits in the lounge. As it is attached to the keyboard via a cable, my mobile phone is not very mobile!

If I could use my voice to turn off the light, once I was in bed with my ‘chair on charge then I would be in total control with no pressure from the timer.

I tried saying “Alexa” but the Echo Dot never sprang into life. I don’t think I was getting the “X” right. After some internet searches I discovered that there are 4 “wake up” commands to select from. The one I can say most clearly is “Echo”. To my surprise, the Dot obeyed my command when I said “Echo, turn on my lamp”.

So, I got a second Echo Dot to sit on my bedside table and can have the light on until I’m ready go to sleep – and listen to the news when I wake up in the morning.

At first it was a little hit and miss as to whether I got the response I wanted – early on it could take up to an hour to turn the light off. But I remembered the words of my Speech Therapist who highlighted that I pronounced words far more clearly when I relax and don’t tense my mouth and throat muscles too much. It now takes no more than a few goes to turn the light off.

I also now use my voice rather than the speech synthesizer to control the Echo Dot in the lounge as much as possible – it’s good practice for talking to humans!

You’ll see in this video from when I was first experimenting with using my voice to control the Echo Dot that the second time I try to ask about the weather, I remembered Niamh’s advice and didn’t try quite so hard.

A man wheels himself into a bar. “Ouch!” he thinks, “Who put that bar in my path?”

A man wheels himself into another bar. He asks the barman for a drink but cannot be understood due to his speech impediment. He goes home and watches TV on his own.

Another man wheels himself into a bar. He asks the barman for a drink. While the drink is being poured they engage in banter about football. Others at the bar join in and go on to invite the man to join them at their table but he has friends to meet elsewhere in the pub.

Hopefully, these bar stories provide some idea of why I find my difficulties in communicating far more frustrating than being unable to walk.

There are exceptions, but nowadays most public buildings are accessible to people with mobility issues and my powered wheelchair enables me to get where I want to go (especially since I got a drive-from-wheelchair van) but communicating with people on arrival is a big barrier.

I don’t often frequent pubs, I prefer watching football and motor racing. I am involved with raising funds at Chester FC and managing websites relating to a saloon car championship based in the North West of England. Thanks to social media (and due to attending these activities for many years), I have got to know many people at the Deva Stadium and Oulton Park so it is very frustrating that communicating with them is so restricted when I meet them face to face.

Things have greatly improved since I undertook a course of speech therapy during 2021 – which was a trial project prior to launching Saluto – The Speech Therapy Charity. People can understand more of what I say which, in turn, gives me more confidence to try and engage with those around me.

Bar Photo by Steve Allison on Unsplash

Oulton Park Photo by Rachel Bourne