Research

Speakeasy is very much rooted in the community, we want us and our members to part of the social networks in which we live.  Initially this is something that can be hard for people with aphasia and they can feels excluded from their social groups and society. Speakeasy takes and makes opportunities to link with others, this gives connectedness and offers members opportunities to be doing more which builds skills, builds confidence and helps people not only to particulate but to give back to their communities.  This is so important as everyone has a right to be valued and useful, and people with aphasia have so much to give. Gill Pearl spends much time out and about meeting people, visit organisations and looking for ways to increase our connections (drop us an email if you want to speak to her).

Speakeasy is involved in research around aphasia, stroke or other topics.

In the past there has been little involvement by people with aphasia in shaping and running research projects. Speakeasy is at the forefront of the work to change this.  

We support members and their carers to particulate in research. We also support the research itself. We have years of experience of helping research to be more suitable for people with aphasia, we run focus groups for many aspects of research, sometimes we help with problem solving when research hits a tricky patch.  Speakeasy as a whole can give a research project access to the opinions and expertise of a large number of people.  We do charge for our involvement (this is just good practice) but we want to do this. Our members often gain skills and confidence through their involvement so it is just another opportunity for us to deliver therapy in a different way!  Take a look at the training section on this website to see if we can you’re your research team to develop better skills themselves for including people with aphasia in their work. Researchers out there – get in touch to see how we can collaborate! Your research will be better for having us involved.

Over the years Gill (our CEO) has been involved in her own research for developing aphasia resources.  We can give researchers access to these preferably for a fee.  There are templates to develop participant information sheets, consent forms, meeting invitations etc. We have done the work for you and they have all been co-designed by people with aphasia.  It is important to use the right images to accompany text. But it is key that the images are the right ones according to people with aphasia, not just pretty colourful pictures! Again Speakeasy has nearly 300 of these images.  All are designed and often modelled by our members and they cover a wide variety of health, social and activity themes; we regularly add to this library. You can use them and all we ask is for an acknowledgement that Speakeasy has designed these (we can supply the wording) and a donation if possible to help us to continue adding to these wonderful resources. They are used all over the world!. 

Check out our Resources page on this site for the templates and for a sample of the images available.  Contact us if you need help.