News – Saluto – The Speech Therapy Charity

Successful Drop In Therapy Session

David Williams — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 20:29:28 +0000

Our first “Drop In” Speech Therapy session was a great success! It was held on 4^th August, at the King George V Community Sports Hub in Blacon.

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!

Cherry Grove School

David Williams — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 20:00:28 +0000

We are delighted to announce that this Autumn, Saluto are supporting some of the children at Cherry Grove School with their communication.

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.

The Rosie Jones Podcast

David Williams — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 20:30:02 +0000

We are thrilled to announce the first Saluto podcast! The very talented comedian, Rosie Jones, kindly agreed to be our guest and she had a fascinating chat with the Saluto founder & chair, Dave Williams, about life on stage & screen for someone with a speech impediment. We are hugely grateful to Rosie for taking part in our podcast.

Our First Project

David Williams — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 20:26:32 +0000

Saluto are delighted to announce the launch of our first project!

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.

Chester Poets’ Society

David Williams — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 19:18:09 +0000

On 14^th September 2023, Saluto were invited to join the Chester Poets Society as they celebrated their 50^th Anniversary at The Storyhouse in Chester.

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…

Raise Funds while Shopping

David Williams — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 20:37:29 +0000

Click THIS link and you will be able to generate donations for Saluto from retailers when you buy goods online.

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.

Echo Echo Echo

David Williams — Sun, 07 Aug 2022 20:22:42 +0000

Due to my speech impediment, I always thought operating voice controlled smart devices would be beyond me but with the help of coaching from my Speech Therapist, Niamh, it is something I am mastering!

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.