By Jocelyn White
Having recently become an HMCTS intermediary, this whole new world of court rooms, legal professionals and terminology has quickly shifted and impacted my outlook on my role as a Speech and Language therapist in a social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) school.
The most powerful starting point is how useful the role is, in that moment in time, for that individual whether they are in court, a conference, or an assessment, where unidentified communication needs are finally seen and reported on.
It has been sadly not surprising how many young people and adults we see as intermediaries who have managed to mask so incredibly well for such long periods of time, whether it be through blending in, relying on outbursts to distract or complete avoidance of interactions.
Coming from a therapeutic and educational background, you get used to everyone being neurodiversity aware. Environments, such as classrooms and dining halls are adapted to suit the communication and sensory needs of the students who attend that specialist school.
It is a stark and important reminder that, sadly, the rest of the world is not like that and, of course, the legal system needs to be black and white, it needs to separate right from wrong.
However, it has opened my eyes to how much more we need to be doing as a profession to identify communication needs and prevent future difficulties.
Watching interactions with service users and their legal teams would be the perfect training video for ‘what is the double empathy problem?’ and I can fully understand why. The double empathy problem is the idea that misunderstandings happen both ways between autistic and non-autistic people – not just because autistic people struggle with social communication, but because both groups have difficulty understanding each other.
A legal team has an aim to support their client, while following a set of complicated laws. A client has an aim to try get their thoughts, their story across in a disjointed, often emotional and repetitive narrative, which does not show understanding of these complicated laws and alternative viewpoints.
As SaLTS in SEMH, we work constantly to develop narrative and self-advocacy skills, where a young person can advocate for themselves in the right way, so they are heard.
However, what if that young person doesn’t have the insight, or self-awareness to even realise they have a communication need? The intermediary role has reminded me, just how important this is.
We need to better prepare these vulnerable children and young people who are so skilled in pushing people away that their communication needs are sadly not identified until they are in the criminal justice system and an intermediary involvement is able to highlight their needs.
The intermediary role has taught me how much these young people need to not only learn how to advocate for themselves, but how and what to do in stressful situations. I don’t mean big dysregulations or heated friendship breakdowns, but those subtle stressful situations, where shame can so easily be attached to how someone feels they are perceived by others.
So, what happens? Pretending they understand when they don’t, disengaging and appearing difficult, or being overly compliant, so their truth is not actually heard.
The disheartening thing is it is not just the higher level, subtle communication needs which are identified. As an intermediary, through informal assessment, I would estimate that about 50% of the service users I have worked with have unidentified receptive and expressive language difficulties.
Alternatively, there are also many service users who would have most likely scored within average range in standardised assessments, however, functionally, are unable to read between the lines, or take different elements of a discussion and conclude or explain a personal event with detailed, personalised descriptions.
The Intermediary Cooperative can highlight these functional communication needs through detailed reports, which use informal assessment to gather specific information on a service user’s communication skills, as well as the negative coping strategies they have implemented, such as masking.
It’s all very well teaching our young people about neurodiversity and helping them to accept who they are – which is extremely important – but we also need to be aware that we are sending them out into a world which is not as neurodiversity aware as it should be.
The intermediary role is one small step in trying to overcome these stigmas around neurodiversity and increase understanding.
These evident needs are so clearly outlined and strategies on how to support these needs in a court room provide some relief for a very short period of time.
But what when they leave that court room without an intermediary? Who is going to pick up those communication needs, which, without doubt, will not only impact them in the court room, but in so many other areas of life.