Curriculum Vitae

Kevin Paul Fower

Profile

I have specialised in stammering for 14 years, working as a national resource in the core areas of clinical work, teaching and training, and research. Central to this is the key skill of building an effective therapy relationship, which supports change. I have established The Stammer Specialist Ltd. to bring these skills into the private sector, providing quality therapy to children, young people, and adults who stammer outside of the NHS.

Employment History

Director and Clinical Lead Speech and Language Therapist, The Stammer Specialist Ltd., London, UK

(January 2021 – present)

Responsibilities:

  • Assessment, therapy, and support for people who stammer of all ages
  • Offering second opinions to families, NHS SLTs, and independent SLTs as part of a consultation service
  • Clinical supervision for UK based SLTs who work with people who stammer
  • Bespoke teaching courses for SLT teams across the UK
  • Ongoing research projects with colleagues at The Michael Palin Centre and UCL in a number of areas including the COM-B model (Michie et al., 2011), Conversation Analysis, and Behaviour Change Theory

Highly Specialist Speech & Language Therapist at The Michael Palin Centre for Stammering, London, UK

(October 2009 – January 2021)

Responsibilities:

  • Highly specialist clinical caseload working with people of all ages who stammer from across the UK
  • Extensive experience working with children, young people, and adults who stammer with additional needs including autism, ADHD, learning difficulty, and Developmental Language Impairment
  • Giving second opinions to NHS and independent SLTs as part of the national tertiary consultation service
  • Management and triage of new referrals for the national consultation service
  • Teaching two, three, and five-day training courses as part of the national and international training team
  • Presentations at international conferences

Chair at The National Stammering Clinical Excellence Network, UK

(September 2019 – July 2022)

Responsibilities:

  • Oversee and guide CEN committee decision-making
  • Chair annual AGMs and EGMs
  • Coordinate recruitment to committee posts
  • Ensure committee activity meets remit and requirements of Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists

Honorary Research Assistant, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, UK

(September 2016 – present)

Responsibilities:

  • Support with interviews and selection for the MSc course in Speech & Language Therapy
  • Marking of clinical examinations at end of academic year
  • Development of joint research project with the team at the Better Conversations Lab

Research Champion at Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists, London, UK

(September 2016 – present)

Responsibilities:

  • Sharing good practice initiatives with Speech & Language Therapists
  • Supporting research and development activities at RCSLT

Speech & Language Therapist at Islington Early Years SLT Service, London, UK

(January 2007 – January 2011)

Responsibilities:

  • Assessment and therapy in a range of clinical areas including speech sound production, cleft palate, dyspraxia, developmental language impairment, bilingualism, and global delay
  • Joint assessment with complex needs team for children with autism and learning difficulty

Education

2006

PGDip in Speech & Language Therapy, City University, London, UK

Pass with merit
Brain and behaviour, phonetics, phonology, voice, language acquisition, acquired language disorders
September 2004 - July 2006
2016

Research Master’s in Applied Research in Human Communication Disorders, University College London, UK

Pass with distinction
Quantitative and qualitative methodology, statistics, qualitative psychology, research evidence and design, 8000 word written thesis
September 2014 – September 2016

Publications

Fower, K., Kelman, S. & Millard, S. (2018).

Palin parent-child interaction therapy for early childhood stuttering. In E. Mendoza & L.A. Planells del Pozo (Eds.) Logopedia: Conectando ciencia y profesión: Recopilación de ponencias XXXI Congreso Internacional AELFA-IF 2018 conference pp. 199-212. Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada.

Fower, K., Harley, J., and Millard, S. (2015).

A closer look: The effects of an intensive group therapy program for young people who stammer. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 193, 339.

International presentations

January 2021

’Exploring the therapeutic effect of a multifactorial assessment process for mothers and fathers of children who stutter’ Oxford Dysfluency Conference, Oxford University, UK (online)

June 2020

‘Building the confidence of school-aged children who stammer’

European Fluency Specialists, Brussels, Belgium (online)

September 2019

‘What is change? The effect of an intensive group therapy programme for young people who stammer’ Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists Conference, Birmingham, UK

July 2018

‘Change and the COM-B model: Exploring the factors that drive change’

International Fluency Association Joint World Congress, Hiroshima, Japan

June 2018

‘Palin Parent-Child Interaction Therapy’ XXXI Congreso Internacional de AELFA-IF, Granada, Spain

September 2017

‘What can we learn from parents of children who stammer?’ Oxford Dysfluency Conference, Oxford University, UK

September 2017

‘Stammering and the COM-B model: Exploring parents’ views of post-treatment changes in communication’ Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists Conference, Glasgow, UK

Skills & Achievements

  • Awarded the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists’ Studentship Grant in 2014 to fund MRes study
  • Speak fluent Spanish
  • Providing clinical supervision for Band 6 speech and language therapists in the Michael Palin Centre clinical team
  • Further training in child and adolescent mental health at the Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre, 2018 and 2019
  • Delivery of training courses in stammering in St Austell, Leeds, and Blackburn in 2018, in Worcester, York, and Jelling and Copenhagen (Denmark) in 2019, and online via Zoom to SLTs in Belfast and Istanbul in 2020

Professional registrations

  • Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists / Membership No. RC0023264
  • Health Care Professions Council / Membership No. SL20975
  • Association of SLTs in Independent Practice / Membership No. 3760