The LUNA team want to say a BIG thank you. A thank you to the 269 speech and language therapists out there across the UK who started our LUNA survey in August 2018, and a thank you to the 211 therapists who made it through to the end of the survey and submitted their responses. You all made this research. We’re extremely chuffed about what we’ve found in discourse analysis practices of therapists in the UK, and now delighted we can share the paper with everyone. It’s available on the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders website here, and also freely available at City’s OpenAccess website here. We encourage clinicians to download the paper from the IJLCD website, and don’t miss the supplemental file too as this contains detailed information on the kinds of discourse behaviours people are analysing, and how confident (and not) people feel about analysing these aspects of language and discourse from clients with aphasia. Last but by no means least, a thank you too to The Stroke Association for funding LUNA.

A short and sweet post on our recent feature in Stroke News.

We were pleased to be invited to feature in the Stroke Association’s magazine Winter 2019 edition. The magazine is published three times a year and is freely available in print and online. You can view the article here https://www.stroke.org.uk/resources/stroke-news-winter-2019 and also listen to the audio version. Our co-designers with aphasia hope that their involvement will inspire other stroke survivors with aphasia to get involved in shaping research.

Oh dear oh dear. LUNA subscribers we are sorry. We realise we have not posted project news for months now. And somehow we are already in March 2020 (and our world is suddenly very different). Prior to COVID-19, we have been extremely busy at LUNA Headquarters getting our ducks in a row for our final phase (our experimental feasibility study) and some important activities like keeping everyone updated have fallen by the wayside. We apologise. We’re going to make amends now, and share news more regularly. For this post, we are going to turn the clocks back to September 2019, where LUNA was in fine force in Norwich at the University of East Anglia for the British Aphasiology Society Clinical Symposium organised by Dr Ciara Shiggins and committee.

We submitted two abstracts and were delighted to find them accepted as a lightning talk and a poster. Simon Grobler and Richard Talbot presented on behalf of the speech and language therapist co-design team and talked about the techniques used in the co-design sessions, the influence therapists have had on developing LUNA, and the challenges and benefits. Lynn Scarth and Madeleine Pritchard presented on behalf of the consultants with aphasia co-design team and talked about the ethos underpinning the sessions, the methods used, the activities experienced, and the benefits of being involved. Finally, we were privileged to be invited for a keynote lecture, and Madeline Cruice presented on behalf of the whole LUNA team on the evidence and expertise in discourse-oriented aphasia rehabilitation. Working on discourse in assessment and treatment is definitely the road less travelled in aphasia rehabilitation, however it was terrific to share some headline findings from our systematic review of the discourse treatment research literature and our survey of therapists reported practice in discourse assessment (THANK YOU to everyone who completed it in 2018!). You can find out more about these presentations at our link here:

https://wakelet.com/wake/d3720da7-482e-4f6b-8cdb-a29ff77ab243