Independent practice should be held to the same standards as any NHS service. This page sets out how we govern our work — our registration, supervision, training, record-keeping, safeguarding and complaints processes — and how we approach evidence. We publish it openly so that families, schools, funders and colleagues can check it for themselves.
Every registration listed here can be checked independently, and we would encourage you to do so.
You can check any registrant on the HCPC online register. We are both certified members of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (MRCSLT) and members of the Association of Speech and Language Therapists in Independent Practice (MASLTIP).
We hold full professional indemnity and public liability insurance through Hiscox, arranged via our Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists membership, covering all clinical and training activity. A copy of our certificate is available on request.
We each receive clinical supervision, as well as providing supervision to other speech and language therapists.
Supervision is where we take our clinical reasoning, our uncertainty and our more complex cases to be questioned by someone outside our own practice. For independent practitioners it is particularly important, because there is no team around you to challenge your thinking by default.
We each access formal clinical supervision from experienced clinicians outside Serennu, alongside regular peer supervision and case discussion with other specialist practitioners.
We both maintain the CPD records required by the HCPC, which are subject to audit. Current and recent training includes:
We describe our practice as evidence-based, and we think it is important to be clear about what we mean by that.
Evidence-based practice, as the profession defines it, draws on three things: the best available research evidence, the clinician's expertise, and the child and family's values and preferences. All three are necessary. Research alone cannot tell a clinician what to do with the particular child in front of them, and clinical judgement alone is not a sufficient basis for practice.
Some of what we do rests on a well-established research base. Motor speech intervention using DTTC is supported by a substantial body of treatment research. AAC has decades of evidence behind it, including clear evidence that introducing AAC does not inhibit speech development. Parent-implemented early intervention is among the best-evidenced approaches in our field.
Other areas are genuinely emerging, and we say so. The Natural Language Acquisition staging model — which describes how some children move from whole memorised phrases towards flexible, self-generated language — is grounded in well-established descriptive linguistics, but its staging framework has a limited treatment evidence base and is actively debated within the profession. Sensory integration has a mixed and contested evidence picture. We use these frameworks because they help us make sense of what we observe, and because families tell us they help — but we do not overstate what they can achieve, and we are open with parents about where the uncertainty lies.
Being clear about the limits of the evidence is part of practising responsibly. It is what allows us to recognise when an approach is not working and change it.
Every child we see has:
If a child is not making progress, we change our approach, or we tell the family that we are not the right service for them. We would rather discharge a child than continue charging for therapy that is not achieving anything.
Full detail is set out in our Privacy Policy and our Terms and Conditions of Service.
We each hold an enhanced DBS check, renewed annually through the DBS update service. Families, schools and organisations can ask to see the certificate at any time.
We work to the Wales Safeguarding Procedures and undertake regular safeguarding training appropriate to our role. Where we believe a child may be at risk of harm, we are legally obliged to share information with the relevant professionals under the Children Act 2004. Our Child Protection Policy is provided to every family before their first appointment, and is available to organisations on request.
We are an addition to NHS provision, not a replacement for it, and we do not ask families to choose between us.
We ask every family to tell us if their child is also receiving NHS therapy, and to tell their NHS therapist that they are seeing us. Where families consent, we share reports, attend meetings and coordinate goals with NHS colleagues, schools and local authorities, so that families are not given conflicting advice by different services.
We welcome contact from NHS and local authority colleagues about any child we see jointly.
If you have a concern about anything we have done, please raise it with us first, so that we have the opportunity to put it right. If we cannot resolve it with you, you can escalate to:
ASLTIP — Association of Speech and Language Therapists in Independent Practice
71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2H 9JQ · 0203 002 3704
HCPC — Health and Care Professions Council
184–186 Kennington Park Road, London, SE11 4BU · 0207 840 9814
Complaints about how we have handled personal data can be raised with us directly, and thereafter with the Information Commissioner's Office.
Last reviewed: August 2026 · Review due: August 2027