Our presenters

Carly Hartshorn is a Speech and Language Therapist with over ten years experience of working in the NHS and in independent practice. She is the Clinical Lead of a Children’s Speech and Language Therapy team.

Carly holds an honorary lectureship with the University of Manchester on the Speech and Language Therapy degree programme. She delivers workshops around communication on the UCL Disabilities of Sight course and provides workshops around language and communication development to trainee teachers.

Carly Hartshorn’s areas of clinical specialism include developmental language disorders, bilingualism, and visual impairment. She has extensive experience in these areas and continues to support the development of new pathways and working practices to support children and young people to reach functional outcomes into adulthood.

Carly sits on the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) North West Hub Executive Committee. She has been a part of the author groups for the RCSLT Clinical Guidelines for Bilingualism and the RCSLT Assistant Practitioner Professional Framework. She is a part of the National Visual Impairment Framework advisory group and has contributed to publications around bilingualism in practice.

Carly Hartshorn is a keen advocate of innovative clinical placements particularly those that build capacity within service delivery while safely supporting students to develop autonomy and independence in clinical practice.

Claire Neaves is a Specialist Speech and Language Therapist.  She became a Licensed Talking Mats trainer in 2022 and joined Talking Mats Ltd as an Associate Tutor in 2025.

Formerly, Claire worked as the NHS Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) for Leicestershire Partnership Trust’s Children’s Service.  She worked with children and young people who need AAC to support their communication in a range of mainstream and specialist settings and has a keen interest in supporting AAC users to give their views and opinions using Talking Mats.

Claire now works as an independent Specialist Speech and Language Therapist, including working in multi-disciplinary teams with medico-legal clients who have acquired brain injuries. She is a classical singer, a qualified Vinyasa yoga teacher and a member of the Yoga Alliance Professionals.

The Course Beetle training team is an in-house professional team of HCPC Registered Speech and Language Therapists and Specialist Advisory Teachers.  This team provide advisory and expert input to in-house projects. They also act as specialist assessors within the organisation’s NCFE Qualification Centre.

Dr Jan Broomfield served as a Consultant Speech and Language Therapist in the NHS for 30 years. Since then, Jan has moved into independent practice where she continues to carry a caseload of children with complex speech disorders.

Jan’s PhD involved a service-wide randomised controlled trial (RCT), evaluating the nature of the caseload as well as the clinical effectiveness of the service offered; the study involved 730 children with speech and/or language disorders. The 320 children identified with primary speech difficulties were assessed using the DEAP (Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology), using Professor Barbara Dodd’s classification system and followed differentiated therapy programmes including the Core Vocabulary approach.

Jan has worked closely with Barbara during and since obtaining her PhD in 2003. Both together and independently, they have published a number of peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Barbara developed the Core Vocabulary approach in response to seeing children with persisting speech disorders who were not responding to other treatment regimes. She has authorised Jan to present this training.

Dr Jan Broomfield led the working party that produced the RCSLT Policy Statement (2011) on Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia. She is a current member of the Child Speech Disorder Research Network (UK and Ireland) and chairs the North-East Speech Clinical Excellence Network.