Do SALT's also deal with eating problems?

[Jenkeywoo]

My dd is 17 months with mild CP. Has suffered with constipation for months and months and no-one has wanted to do anything other than tell us to give suppositories every 3-4 days which we've been doing for months and months. She doesn't eat well and not in great quantities - maybe a mouthful of cereal here or there, 4 spoons of a dinner is wonderful and no fruit at all. I kicked up a fuss last week and the HV left me a message today to say that she had referred DD to the Dietician and also the SALT team. The one thing she is doing really really well is talking so I'm a bit confused - so I assume SALTs must also somehow deal with food issues? You see I think dd's food issues are not to do with texture or problems swallowing etc as she can tackle big pieces of squid tentacles and prawns etc if she's in the mood, she is just a very very stubborn little girl who knows what she likes.

[Peachy]

SALt deal with tings like chewing, swallowing etc yes, sounds like HV is on the ball!

[2shoes]

The SALT helped us in the begining with dd and recentley(she is 12)

[alycat]

We have a SALT led feeding clinic, with a salt, physio, nutritionist, ot, etc there.

My DS has the same problem, can eat 1/2 adult sized pizza but not anything else somedays! Just very stubborn and distrustful of anything that doesn't look familiar.

Personally I didn't find it helpful, but many I know do - also I think I had a personalitiy clash with the nutritionist (I'm better qualified than her and she was spourting irrelevant nonsense)

I went for a speech point of view - his speech is very delayed and he doesn't eat inconsistent textures/overactive gag reflex (I know that he gets a good balance of main food groups over the week) I just wanted to know if the gagging/slow speech were linked.

[saggarmakersbottomknocker]

We used to see dietician and SALT Jenkey. Dd was tube fed for a year and did have have a degree of oral aversion and a very senstive gag reflex. I'm not sure that the SALT helped particularly. I was already doing all the things she suggested; food play generally, but dd was (and still is) very stubborn when it comes to food.
She's 13 now and still has very strong likes/dislikes (no fruit here either, none whatsoever, never have and can't ever see it happening).

The dietician was helpful in that she prescribed additives for dd's food so that she could get her calories from a very small amount intake. And these days the amount certainly isn't a problem, just the variety.

Have you tried movicol for dd's constipation?

[reiver]

Ditto with the Movicol suggestion - we found it a great help and once the output was under control, DD's input improved too.

[Jenkeywoo]

We've just been prescribed lactulose but I'm not holding out much hope. Everyone has been very reluctant to prescribe dd with any actual medication as they want her to learn to poo herself - but it annoys me as I feel quite strongly that if she was pooing properly she would eat better too. She definatively eats well the day after a poo! I'm a bit nervous as I feel that somehow a dietician will criticise me and assume I don't bother to try to feed dd decent food. Oh well, mustn't get on the defensive yet as an apppointment is properly months away anyway!