Provision of augmentative and alternative communication devices

The request was successful.

Dear Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust (PCT),

I am an academic researcher, attempting to assess the provision of augmentative and alternative communication devices by the NHS. Would you please send me details of augmentative and alternative communication devices supplied/purchased by your trust between 31st March 2006 and 1st April 2011. I would like the information broken down by both product name (So for example Dynavox Xpress, iPod touch with TapToTalk, BigMack) and by year. I would like information for both children and adults, but I don't require a breakdown by age.

I attempting to find out how many people who have poor or no speech have a speech aid, in particular electronic speech aids, and I would like to know how many have been supplied by the trust during the last five years.

Deven PCT have helpfully give examples on a previous request. The format they used was

2005/06
4 X Digital Electronic Larynxes (Servox)
2 x Listen To Me
2 x Lightwriters
1 x Dynawrite
1 x Dynamo
1 x Falck Voice Amplifier
1 x Lions Speech Aid
1 x Go Talk
1 x Little Mack

2006/07
9 x Digital Electronic Larynxes (Servox)
2 x Lightwriters
1 x mini Printer
2 x The Grid software
2 x Falck Voice Amplifiers
1 x Listen To Me
1 x Textphone
1 x Talking Symbols Notepad

and this would do nicely for me. Other excellent formats were provided by:
Bradford and Airedale Teaching PCT
(http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/co...)
Bromley PCT (http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/co...)
Bristol PCT ( http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/co...)
and Central Lancashire PCT
(http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/au...)

Just to make the process more efficient for you guys - it would be great to clarify a couple of things at this stage - I am aware that some trusts make use of commissioning trusts to do the actual purchase of the devices; when I have contacted the commissioning trusts I've been often redirected back to the PCT because the paperwork for previous years have been stored at the PCT - this redirection must be causing additional work for both trusts in the long run and it would be great to avoid it (http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/au...
is an example of the problem)

Also, and again to make life easier for you, I should point about that since this request is being made via whatdotheyknow.com - email addresses are stripped out of replies to protect your privacy (because the responses are all available to public view- if you are to redirect my request to another body then it's ideal to just give the name of the body rather than just an email address

Yours faithfully,

Dr Joseph Reddington

Ball, Jonathan, Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust (PCT)

Dear Joe,

Thank you for your Freedom of Information Act request sent to NHS Tower Hamlets as detailed in your email below. We will reply as soon as possible on behalf of this Trust and in any event within 20 working days following the date we received your request.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Ball
FOI Lead
Corporate Performance and Development
NHS East London and the City
Warehouse K
2 Western Gateway
London E16 1DR
Tel. 0207 0596746
[email address]
NHS East London and the City is a cluster of three primary care trusts; NHS City and Hackney, NHS Newham and NHS Tower Hamlets.

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FOI, Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust (PCT)

Dear Joe,

Further to our previous emails I am contacting you on behalf of NHS City & Hackney, NHS Tower Hamlets and NHS Newham.

I have been informed by our finance department that the only way they can supply this information is if you could let us have a list of device suppliers so that they can run a report by supplier across the 3 organisations.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Ball
FOI Lead
Corporate Performance and Development
NHS East London and the City
Warehouse K
2 Western Gateway
London E16 1DR
Tel. 0207 0596746
[email address]
NHS East London and the City is a cluster of three primary care trusts; NHS City and Hackney, NHS Newham and NHS Tower Hamlets.

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Dear FOI,

That seems pretty fair - the best list is probably at http://www.bhta.net/member-directory.asp..., plus we should probably have dynavox (sometimes written as
DynaVox Mayer-Johnson) and Apple (because iPads and iPhones can also double as AAC devices with the right apps)

Yours sincerely,

Joe

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