Communication at the Heart of the School

About the Author

Rachel Sawford is a highly specialist speech and language therapist who helps schools to address the challenges of developing communication for children with a Learning Disability.

Rachel believes that speech and language therapists have the biggest impact when they give time to developing good-quality environments where all children can benefit. She recognises that all those around the child have a role to play in supporting their communication.

Rachel is currently working in schools to implement the whole Communication at the Heart of the School approach (CATHS). This involves offering bespoke training and help in embedding the approach in the curriculum. She continues to support other therapists working with CATHS in a variety of other settings including in mainstream and adults with Learning Disabilities.

Rachel and Ann have also written a very popular signing course and manual based on the CATHS principles called Developing and Using Signing published by The Signalong Group.

Rachel enjoys nothing more than spending time with her husband and children.

Ann Miles is a special education teacher who spent her career working in schools for children with Learning Disabilities. Drawing upon her classroom experience and extensive knowledge of early communication, she has packaged up all the elements of CATHS to share with other professionals.

Ann is a firm believer that for communication to be successful it needs to be both natural and meaningful. The development of communication skills should be embedded within all aspects of teaching and the curriculum.

Ann worked with Clare Latham on the original assessment in Developing Communication (Fulton 1997) and then on communication within the curriculum in Communication, Curriculum and Classroom Practice (Fulton 2000).

After meeting Rachel, they worked closely together refining and developing the approach that is now CATHS.

She spends her free time attempting to grow vegetables and dinghy sailing.