A speech and language therapist in Ealing has been awarded by an NHS Trust for her important work with children and families across the borough.

Hannah Howell-Day won Allied Health Professional of the Year in an awards ceremony with the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.

Working with children's services across Ealing, Hannah is part of an early start universal team who deliver crucial access to support services in speech and language therapy for local parents and families.

"We are super lucky in Ealing to still have this team," Hannah, 31, told Nub News. "There's not many teams like that left because the government have cut spending nationally in this area.

"It's even more important since the pandemic as children have been at home and needs have not really been identified early."

The team focus on health promotion and prevention, providing drop in sessions, parent training and have also created an Ealing Children's Services YouTube channel.

The second half of Hannah's job sees her leading a team of secondary school speech and language therapists.

Hannah highlighted the increased strain the pandemic has put on their already stretched services.

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She said: "Our work load has definitely increased because during Covid we couldn't see children face to face so the waiting lists have got longer.

"We could only see them online and some people obviously can't do this. Also, some of the children weren't in schools and weren't able to access therapy online or didn't find this motivating to do."

She stressed: "There are so many kids who have been at home and not had their needs identified.

"If you were born at the beginning of the pandemic and you're two now, that's a really crucial period of development.

"It will probably affect us for a long time, firstly because of waiting lists and secondly for the kids, they are not all going to be the same as the kids before (the pandemic)."

Her anonymous nominator said: "Hannah has worked in partnership with children centre staff, families, Early Start SEND Inclusion, local nurseries, childminders, reaching out to harder to reach communities (and more!) to work towards getting the message out there about supporting children's communication needs and to achieve the best possible outcomes for the children we support."

They added: "Hannah has single-handedly led a Universal, KS3 Core team and redeveloped the Service for children under five, created a digital offer to families who cannot access support during work hours, supports every member of the team both clinically and checks in on everyone's wellbeing."

Hannah found out about winning the award when she was on annual leave last Wednesday.

"I was so shocked I couldn't really say anything," Hannah said. "I was asked to do a speech and I just said I love my job and cried in front of 200 people on zoom.

"You don't really expect it, I love my job I really do, so it's nice for people to see this."

Ealing Children's Speech and Language Therapy have a Facebook page to find out more about their work.