Emily Jones BAppSci (SpPath), MSpchLangTher (Hons), MNZSTA

Emily has specialised in paediatric feeding and swallowing since 2001. She was Senior Specialist at Southwark Primary Care Trust,  coordinating the Paediatric Dysphagia service for that London Borough. Emily completed her advanced practitioner training in Paediatric Dysphagia at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2003. In 2006 after moving to Auckland, she became Clinical Service Leader for Paediatric Speech-Language Therapy at Waitemata District Health Board. This involved leading the speech-language therapy service in the Special Care Baby units at North Shore and Waitakere Hospitals, Rangatira Unit (paediatric inpatients) at Waitakere Hospital, the Child Development Services in north and west Auckland the Rehabilitation Unit at the Wilson Home.

During her time at WDHB, Emily helped lead the Food for Flourishing Programme at Waitakere Hospital. This was an innovative 3-week programme that supported children and their families transition from their feeding tubes to being able to eat and drink by mouth. This programme continues and is now based at Starship Children's Hospital. As well as helping to transition children off their feeding tubes, Emily wrote guidelines for the Fun with Food Programme at WDHB. This was an outpatient transdisciplinary group programme to help children who have delayed feeding skills due to their medical condition and/or delayed introduction to solids.

Emily was appointed to the role of Clinical Educator at Massey University in 2012. The Paediatric and Infant Feeding and Nutrition Centre (PiFAN) at Massey University was created the same year, and the ACTIVEating Programme was developed. This programme is interdisciplinary in which Speech-language therapy and dietetic students assess and treat children with feeding difficulties. This clinic supports children as young as 6 months to 18 years and their families with limited dietary intake due to oral motor sensory difficulties, developmental difficulties or maybe typically developing but taking less than thirty foods in their diet and maybe refusing whole food groups or textures. The speech-language therapy and dietetic students also work together through  Massey University Adult Dysphagia Simulation Workshops using International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative (IDDSI) implementation methods to produce textured foods and fluids for dysphagia patients.

Emily coordinates and teaches the Paediatric Dysphagia & Feeding Disorders Course to final year Bachelor of Speech-Language Therapy (Honours) students in Semester One at the Auckland campus. In 2016 she completed her Master's thesis- Factors contributing to paediatric tube feeding dependency: The Speech-Language Therapist's perspective.  Emily was an invited member of the Clinical Network for Paediatric Tube Feeding coordinated by the Paediatric Society of New Zealand. This is a multidisciplinary group focused on the needs of tube dependent children and their families. She was invited to be the Expert Advisor for Paediatric Feeding and Swallowing for the New Zealand Speech-Language Therapists' Association (NZSTA) in 2017. She was recently invited to be on the Technical Advisory Group for the Ministry of Health, to review and help write their Infant, Toddler Feeding and Nutrition guidelines. and is a PhD candidate at Massey Univerisity, part of the Health Research Council-funded First Foods NZ project.