Speech & Language Therapist Training & CPD Courses

Historically, stammering has been understood as a defect that needs to be fixed. Over the past two decades, therapists and people who stammer have looked beyond such aims and instead developed approaches to therapy that affirm stammering as a valid and respectable way of speaking. These stammering-affirming therapy approaches look to shift how people feel about and approach their stammer in daily life to build a shared world that respects and sees value in stammering. 

Sam Simpson is a speech and language therapist, person-centred counsellor, supervisor and trainer (www.redefiningstammering.co.uk) living outside London, England. Sam has a particular interest in critical disability studies, stammering activism and what stammering can teach us about ourselves and the world, and actively promotes stammering-affirming therapy practices and culture. Together with Carolyn Cheasman and Rachel Everard, Sam co-edited 'Stammering Therapy from the Inside: New Perspectives on Working with Young People and Adults' in 2013, which set out to enrich professional accounts of contemporary stammering therapy by including clients as co-authors of therapy knowledge. Together with Patrick Campbell and Christopher Constantino, Sam co-edited 'Stammering Pride and Prejudice: Difference not Defect' in 2019. Combining personal narrative, art and disability theory, the book documents how society has historically disabled people who stammer and the diverse ways in which people are creating novel and exciting understandings of their speech. They are currently collaborating on the sequel. Sam is a founder member of Stuttering Commons (https://www.stutteringcommons.org/) an international education initiative aiming to deconstruct, unsettle and bend fluency privilege.