What to expect at a Compass assessment

We usually come to see you in your home, school / college or day centre, as this helps us see what your communication needs are where you spend most of your time.

However, if you prefer, you can come to see us at the RHN. This will be arranged with the healthcare professional who referred you to us.

At an initial assessment, we will:

• discuss the difficulties you are experiencing and what you would like help with
•  explore different ways of communicating and try different techniques and equipment
•  look at different methods to help you access and use the equipment
• agree goals with you

Following the assessment…

You may need to trial a communication aid to establish whether it works for you. When the best solution for you has been identified and agreed upon, the equipment will be set up for you to use.

We will support your local therapists to help you use the communication aid and then decide if this is a good long term solution for you. If the equipment hasn’t worked for you, we will review and try some other options. If the communication aid has helped you then we will provide the equipment under the NHS England Specialised Commissioning AAC contract.

You will then receive ongoing maintenance and support for your device and you can contact us if there are any problems. We may log in to your computer or device remotely and attempt to fix the issue over the phone, but if we are unable to resolve the issue, we may need to collect the equipment and send it away for repair. If you are dependent on your device for communication, we will do everything we can to provide a replacement device, until your system is working again.

If you do not meet the criteria for our Specialised AAC Service, you may still be able to get some help with your communication from your local speech and language therapy service. Please contact your GP for a referral to this service.