Help please - A quick SALT question.

[anonandlikeit]

I've received a letter from the SALT saying they want to discharge him. He actually has not had any direct SALT input for over a year now, (something I plan to discuss with his paed).

DS2 is almost 6 at ms school with support. His vocabulary & language is actually good now, his clarity of speech is still IMO a little behind but continuing to improve without extra intervention from SALT.
The areas he does struggle with are word recall/finding, using language in social situations, he is particularly bad when the focus of attention is on him, so struggles to
answer basic questions & choice & decision making.
The areas he struggles with cause him a great deal of distress to the poin of him dropping to the floor crying when he can't find the words.

My question is, is this the type of problems the SALT should be able to help with or should we be asking for more specific support from another department.

I've left a message on their answer machine & don't want to sound like i'm talking out of my backside when i speak to them.

Thanks as always for your advice.

[TotalChaos]

Yes - SALT should also work on all aspects of communication and social communication, not just the bogstandard being able to produce a sentence in response to being shown a picture. They should be working to help him find strategies to work around and hopefully ultimately overcome his difficulties. DS has recently attended a "narrative" group - which has foccused a lot on answering questions, distinguishing between people/place and time - something like that could be useful for your DS. Does your DS get confused with the "wh?" words - i.e you ask who and get an answer to where etc?

[anonandlikeit]

Thanks TC, yes he does get confused with those words, I often just get the blank stares in response to questions.
I do fell for him as he has just reached the point where he wants to share things with us, so will poke me to get my attention & when i say Yes M, all he can manage is erm, I er, er, er, er, then he bites his hand in frustration & says I can't do it & gets upset.
Other times he can rattle off a sentence.

He also can't recall peoples names, has problems with recognition generally.

Thanks for your advice i'll ask for the lot now!

[TotalChaos]

I've seen on the Amanda Kirby thread that he isn't a visual learner - advice I had on the "wh?" questions was to add in visual supports - either signing or pictograms to help - don't know if that would be suitable for your DS. As DS is very visual the stuff that helps him won't necessarily work for your DS, hope other s will be a long with better suggestions...