Coaching Communication Partners EP-AAC

Dr Sam Brydon

Sam Brydon is a Speech Language Therapist with over 30 years of experience and a passion for AAC. Sam lives and works in Aotearoa / New Zealand. Sam completed doctoral research in 2023, which focused on providing support to parents through a training and coaching programme called “Empowering Parents for AAC” (EP-AAC). Sam is also the New Zealand trainer for LAMP Words for Life.

Supporting children to use AAC is not easy, and one of the reasons that AAC systems are abandoned is because the child's communication partners (parents, family, educators) often don't get enough support and don't feel they have the skills needed to help the child learn to use their AAC system. The supportive AAC strategies required take time and practice to learn. Sam is passionate about supporting communication partners using a structured coaching approach.

Coaching for Communication Partners 2-day workshop

This is the highly practical, 2-day workshop developed from Sam's doctoral research, suitable for any professional working with children and families who use AAC. Learn about the essential strategies needed to support children who are learning to use AAC, practise how to explain and demonstrate these strategies to the child's family and education team, and then learn about a collaborative coaching model you can use to support successful implementation of AAC. 98% of participants have rated this workshop as either essential or very useful for their everyday practice. For bookings, contact Sam.

View flyer (PDF)

This workshop is available in New Zealand through the TalkLink Trust.

What Participants are Saying

Honestly enjoyed it all so much! - Highly relevant to my mahi - Loved the videos of the families involved - Particularly enjoyed your explanations around HOW to talk through strategies etc. with parents - The depth and breadth of what you covered was so helpful. - The flow of the slides and information made so much sense and really helped my understanding - One of the best and most relevant workshops I've been to in a long time :)
Early Intervention Teacher - New Zealand

Thank you so much. This 2-day course is essential for anyone who would like to develop their own knowledge, skills and their ability to coach others to use AAC. I feel confident to try this approach with families and education staff. I feel it will have a huge impact to empower them to use AAC confidently to support their children.
SLT - North London, England

This was such a fantastic course. I usually hate roleplay, but I found the opportunity to practice being the coach so incredibly useful and it's definitely increased my confidence. I also loved being able to follow the different cases and parents who you have coached.
SLT, Sydney, Australia

Thanks for all the new knowledge- I'm an Early Intervention teacher and the coaching and AAC info is very helpful :)

I really loved this course and found it highly valuable and incredibly helpful. The videos, your real life examples and experiences. You are an incredibly engaging and enthusiastic presenter, I was captivated the whole time! Ngā mihi nui ki a koe Sam! Kei runga noa atu koe!
SLT, New Zealand

Sam was phenomenal. BT SLT here and this has been THE best PD slash coaching workshop I have ever been on in my entire student/professional career. WISH WE HAD MORE WITH YOU!!!!

Thankyou so much! This has been one of the best PD courses I've attended and I can already see how much it will change my practice.
SLT, Brisbane, Australia

I really enjoyed this course. Often 2-day courses are overwhelming and I leave thinking it's too much to implement but this was the opposite. It was hugely interesting and I actually feel like I can implement the coaching model. Thank you!!!!!!!!!
SLT, New Zealand

LAMP Words for Life Training

Offered as an online course in 2025 through ATANZ

Information and booking

Research

Empowering parents to use a core board with children who have complex communication needs Doctoral research has amazing communication outcomes for children

Publications

Article in Augmentative and Alternative Communication Journal 2025 (Abstract)Article in Augmentative and Alternative Communication Journal 2025 (Full Article, PDF)An easy-to-digest version of our research is available in The Informed SLP

Talking with Tech podcast about Sam's research Spotlight on Core Boards (altogetherautism.org.nz)Empowering parents for AAC: Developing an evidence base for core board use (Communication Matters 52, pg.6)

Contact

sam.brydon@empoweringparentsaac.nz

News

Last week I ran the Coaching for Communication Partners workshop in Christchurch, organised through TalkLink. It was a great bunch of participants including speech language therapists from a variety of settings, three teachers from a special school unit, and some teacher aides working in high school. I always love hearing perspectives from different professions. It helps us to understand each other and have insight into the various challenges we experience when we are implementing AAC with tamariki and their whānau.

Here are some thoughts from the participants:

“Loved every minute of it Sam, even the challenging questions that made me think!”

“I loved how flexible your approach was and how open you were about things not always going perfectly this makes it feel doable! I think this is an essential course for MoE SLTs as it fits our model of service really well. I enjoyed hearing your thoughts on prompting and was reassuring. I liked the reminders of things that we forget to explain - eg targeted vs general modelling. Keep running these!!!!”

“This was a fantastic course that all SLTs, EITs, and managers at MOE should do. The role playing was an essential part, even though it is confronting. It was also useful to have to complete action plans in pairs. Thanks for challenging us to be better at supporting teachers and families of children who use AAC. It was also really fun and relaxed.”

I also had feedback on ways to improve the workshop which I will act on as I am always seeking to improve and make this workshop as useful as it can be.