Dr Aileen Wright

I am Course Director of the MSc Speech & Language Therapy programme in the School of Allied Health, Faculty of Education and Health Sciences at UL. The focus of my research is the development of practices which support optimal, evidence based intervention and efficient service delivery for children and young people with speech language and communication needs. I am particularly interested in identifying how best use can be made of scarce resources in supporting children with SLCN: specifically in identification of those children who have persisting needs as opposed to protracted development, and in collaborations between parents, early years education, schools and speech and language therapy services to provide the most effective and efficient models of intervention and service delivery. My doctoral studies involved a longitudinal study of children referred to SLT services for speech sound disorders, looking at the natural history, rate of resolution and predictors of persistent as opposed to transient difficulties. I am now continuing this work using the data from the Growing Up in Ireland longitudinal cohort. I am a member of the SLCN@UL research group, currently involved in projects evaluating projects that introduce SLT services into schools and preschools.