Speech Therapy in School

[DiscoBabe]

My ds is starting reception after easter and is currently receiving speech therapy.

Once he starts school SaLT will come in to assess once a term but the work will all be down to myself and the school.

I'm hoping someone can give me any idea of how much i can expect the school to do for him? I have a meeting on 1st April to do his IEP and discuss things with them but i don't want to go in making unreasonable requests, but nor do i want to be fobbed off with them doing less than they should.

He deletes his final consonants and can't say his frictive sounds. People often find it hard to understand him unless they know him quite well and as he only speaks properly to one teacher. Just so you have an idea of his difficulties.

Any advice gratefully received :)

[nailak]

my dd4 is the same#!!! i had to wait untill she was 4 before sl asessed her, now they are sayin they will assess her but dont know if she will et salt coz of cuts :(

[nailak]

i meant dd1 (4)

[hocuspontas]

Depending on how many other children need 1-to-1 assistance he could get as much as 5 mins a day or only 5 mins a week. I've found parents very rarely do anything at home yet expect us to work miracles!
It's good to hear you are supportive at home so I hope the school can complement that with a regular programme.

[ragged]

It must vary a lot by LEA & HA.
DS was in reception from September; he started his SALT (external to school) in May of reception year. That was 5 or 6 sessions before the school holidays.

In the autumn (y1) he had another ~6 SALT sessions, this time all on school premises (I wasn't present).

All the way thru I had lots of homework to do with him, and phone calls/invitations to sit in, when he had SALT in school.

hth.

[ragged]

Oh, and he had 5 or 10 minutes 2-4x/week of listening & later speech exercises with the TAs. That was specified on his IEP.

[ragged]

DS exercises with TA were usually in small groups of him + another 2-3 children, I think. But some individual work, too, especially in reception.

[BlueberryPancake]

Basically in my experience, you have to do it yourself. Don't expect any speech therapy in school. Budgets are being cut and Salts look overworked, too busy, too many schools, too many children. I think that we can say goodbye to salts in school.

I have just been told that when DS starts reception he will receive sziltch speech therapy although he has been followed from the age of three for severe speech delay. But I have managed to get him an appointment to be tested for dyspraxia. Even with a diagnosys there's no support in school. The teachers are somehow expected to pick that as well as looking after another 29 children. Salts are now very keen on assessment but no actual therapy.

If he does have therapy it will be after school at speech therapy centre, together with other children who also have a delay, in blocks of 6 weeks (once a week) with long breaks in between.

Cuts, cuts, cuts, cuts. That's all I can say.

[beautifulgirls]

You'll be doing well to get the therapist in school to even assess him once a term!

With regards to the IEP you want to ask how often they will be taking him aside alone or as part of a small group to help him with the IEP targets. Ask that where possible the speech therapist helps them to set the targets, but also if possible ask them to try and push the therapist to help demonstrate to the staff how to help him. It seems too often that SLT will assess and list all the issues but then no help is given as to how best to help correct these problems. If you can persuade the SLT to come into school once a term then perhaps you may actually manage to get that help for the staff too. The staff are in a really difficult situation - they are left to help but are not therapists.

[BlueberryPancake]

My husband is a teacher in a primary school and from this year, Salts are giving lists of things to do with children with speech problems. But there's no resources or proper trainign that goes with it. It takes years of studies to become a salt and suddenly they expect that a Teacher Assistant who is payed 12 grand a year to be able to provide the same level of service for the children. It makes me furious. As if teachers and TAs can just pick up buck for everything. They don't have time or resources to do it.

[BlueberryPancake]

Sorry I just realised that my post was very rude. I am just so cross about this thing. I'll shut up now... (kettle now on...)

[FollowMe]

My ds started reception in September in a similar boat. He has had an amazing amount of support so far. He has had the termly salt assesment and then the class teachers get a program to follow. I get sent the same program. He gets 15 mins 1 to 1 time every day with a ta to follow the program and I also do similar at home.
He has completed ALL last terms targets this way (he can now say the sounds g and k, which he was completely unable to pronounce before) and is making great progress on the latest targets.
He's actually progressing faster than he was with the weekly pre school salt sessions

[FollowMe]

Blueberry Pancake - the program set by the SALT for my DS to do, is intended to be done at home as well as at school and is therefore set out in terms that anyone could understand. If its simple enough for the parents to action at home, then it should be simple for an untrained TA to also be able to implement at school as well.

[BlueberryPancake]

Yes but teachers and TAs have a set job to do and 30 children to look after. The school is not assigned any budget for speech therapy and and has no legal obligation to deliver. So depending on how keen the school is to implement the recommendation, they can either do it, not do it, or do it when someone is available.

It used to be that fully trained speech therapist would deliver speech therapy (for the children who'd need it most) and there was a set budget for it for each school (that's how it used to work in our borough anyway). Children with very severe delay would have a 'statement of special education needs'. Now, TAs or teachers have to take time out of the classroom or their normal tasks to do these sessions on top of their normal workload. Something else has to give in. As many schools are understaffed anyway, it is not possible to deliver this efficiently in every school.

I have difficulty understanding that a TA could deliver a course of speech therapy sessions similar to what would be delivered by a fully qualified Speech Therapist. Maybe DS' case is extreme, but he doesn't have just a defect in his speech or a number of defects; we have great difficulty understanding most of what he says.

By the way, he is currently receiving intensive speech therapy in a special language unit and although he is improving, the progress is very slow.

[hocuspontas]

FollowMe - us TAs get a wodge of photocopied sheets and, if we are lucky, a copy of a letter outlining the specific problem. Unless we know the SALT is coming in and give up some of our lunch hour to ask questions we have no idea on how to deliver the programme, how to pronounce sounds, what we are looking for etc etc. I used to wedge 4 children in between 1.00 and 1.15 of an afternoon and be expected to record their progress within that time as well. It's not that 'simple' because you are too harrassed

[ninjanurse]

My DS (now 5 1/2 and in Year One) had speech dyspraxia, and we waited ages for SALT before he started formal weekly therapy at the age of 4 - just as he started reception. The SALT gave us work to do at home and I fed all this back to his teacher. The SALT suggested every day practise at school would be beneficial, so when I had the IEP meeting with the SENCO we arranged 2 x 5 minutes every day with the TA. It was basically repeating sounds whilst playing games. The SENCO told me they would be able to provide up to 12.5 hrs a week 1to1 support without the need of a statement and that it is very very unusual to get a statement for a child with speech difficulties now.

A year of this 3 pronged approach by school, home and the weekly therapy, meant his speech problems all but disappeared and he is now doing very well in year one with no therapy at all and is reported to be above average in numeracy and literacy!

[DiscoBabe]

Followme, that sounds very similar to how its supposed to work here.

Ds will not get any speech therapy from SaLT they will simply assess him once a term.

I fully appreciate teachers are not trained in speech and language, nor am I, yet I am still able to follow a programme at home with a little explanation from SaLT. Therefore i don't believe the fact that teachers or TA's not being fully trained is a reason for them not to also do the work. Its all about communicating with each other.

I understand that finding the time poses a big problem. This is why i'm worried we won't receive a decent amount of support. At home ds will have reading homework, phonics homework and then speech therapy to do as well, so additional support from the school, i feel, is very important.

His speech therapist has told me the school should be able to obtain additional funding for him under EEYA+ but the school do not wish to place him on EY+ or apply for the funding.

[EleanorSLT]

Hi, I am an independent speech and language therapist, but I used to work for the NHS. Obviously the NHS service is under great strain and caseloads are huge,hence the difficulty. There has been research completed that has found that as long as the staff at school have received appropriate training and guidance on how to implement the programme and the programme is written explicitly and without jargon, good results can be achieved (sometimes as good as one to one therapy), but of course this is only for the less complex cases.

I used to work in a similar way in schools due to an incredibly large caseload, and found that most schools were very willing to help, as often these speech sound skills impact on a child's reading and spelling and therefore school could be seen as an appropriate place to help to address the problem. We often recommend that a programme be followed for 5 - 10 minutes daily but in reality most schools managed it 2-3 times per week for approx 10 - 15 minutes each session, and we did have some good results with this sort of frequency. I think this would be a fair amount of time to ask for.

I hope this helps,

Eleanor Harris

[DiscoBabe]

That helps a lot. Thank you

[AbigailS]

Problems occur when there is noone in school to deliver the speech therapy. If you don't have a TA when is a teacher supposed to do it 1 to 1? What are the rest of the class doing for these 10 minutes without the teacher? Which lesson part do you skip to fit it in?
I think the work of the SaLTs is great and many children need support, but they often give us advice that parents expect us to follow, without consulting with schools whether they have the resources to implement the programme.
We are even shorter of money this year, but health cuts leave us expected to do speech therapy with about four children in each class (all with different needs), plus daily physio / exercises with a couple in each year group (again all different)
So, OP do check what the school can provide, but as you say, don't let them fob you off if they do have someone who can work with your child.

[EleanorSLT]

I quite agree Abigail, and it is not an ideal situation, but needs must. It is one of the reasons I left the NHS and now work independently as I can provide 1:1 direct therapy at an appropriate frequency. Obviously if a school doesn't have a TA to deliver the programme then it would not be possible as Teachers have enough on their plates already!