Questions about pupil premium and other funding

[Jannt86]

Hiya. My LG adopted 9MO just turned 3 last month. She's generally doing amazing and comes across as a smart little cookie. She understands what the process of reading is and that letters blend to make words and can sometimes tell me what a word is if I sound it out for her if that makes sense. She can also count fairly well. Both of the above very much depend on her mood She's also fab physically. Can ride a bike no stablisers. She also socialises well with other kids and can play really well. However I'm starting to worry about her speech again. I generally can tell what she is saying most of the time but I still sometimes struggle. I looked into it and something I noticed was that she often misses the first letter of her words and apparently this is quite atypical and a bit of a red flag? I've spoken to nursery who have always said she's doing great but on pressing them about it they said that they'd also noticed her speech 'isn't the clearest' although they didn't really elaborate on how it is compared to others her age. She speaks very conversationally in long sentences and understands literally everything. We also both don't think she makes great eye contact sometimes although this is more often if you're trying to talk to her about something she doesn't want to talk about and she makes great ec with her peers. She's generally happy at home and nursery although moving to preschool has been quite hard for her and she's regressed a bit (toilet training gone a bit downhill, occasional challenging behaviour etc) Anyway, nursery are going to get their SENCO to spend some time with her and see what they think and also probably refer for speech tx so I'm impressed with how proactive they're being. I was just wondering if anyone can share experiences of what to expect with this and how I can best advocate for her from this point? I was also wondering if anyone could roughly break down what funding she's entitled to at this age and make any suggestions on how this might be spent to help her? I'm not hugely concerned but I just want her to get the best chance she can to thrive. TIA

As far as I can tell it’s about £300 per year for early years and goes up to about £2300 per year when they are at school. It’s not ring fenced for her though and ours has never been spent on our dc.

I am not sure if developmentally they are supposed to sound out all the consonants yet by 3. I remember a speech therapist I worked with saying they are expected to get them by different ages. My son had speech therapy for missing consonants, but he was not referred until 5 and a half. The therapy was successful but the speech therapist said even at that age a lot of children get the consonants on their own without therapy. Sounds like the SENCO observing him is a great idea.

No I'm not too worried about her not being able to sound out all consonants but she still makes an awful lot of errors including regularly missing the first consonant from a word eg yellow becomes 'ellow' and I didn't really think much of it but apparently it's a bit of a red flad ITO persistant speech disorders. Yes I don't have an issue with SLT seeing her and just want her to get the best chance at succeeding in school. I'm not concerned there's a major issue and I think she's on track otherwise.

I don't know about early years funding, but once at school the enhanced pupil premium should be ring fenced (unless things have changed) though others can piggyback.

My AD2 had 2 rounds of SALT whilst at nursery. Before she had it there was a session for parents where they were really good at explaining how to help and how speech develops.

Maybe take some time each day to do some focussed play where you really slow down your speech and emphasise starting sounds. Like yyyyyyellow or b b b big.

She sounds way ahead in some things. Riding a bike at just 3 with no stabilisers is amazing.

A book we found very useful was Baby Talk by Sally Ward. It covers how to help develop speech as well as what appropriate toys at different stages of development, and when to worry.

Both mine had difficulties with speech when placed with me at 4 and 6, my 6 year old had support from SALT, which has helped enormously but part of her issue is a long standing hearing problem that went undetected.

For my 4 year old the advice from SALT was to talk with him a lot, he struggled with consonant sounds particularly and the advice at that stage was not to correct his pronunciation but to repeat back the sentence correctly, so if he told me there was a yellow car (pronunced as eyyow by him), I’d say something like yes that’s a lovely yellow car so he would hear it correctly. Once in school they helped his consonant sounds when doing phonics, helped him learn the right mouth shape, tongue position etc. He’s 8 now and still struggles with the “sh” sound but otherwise his speech is fine.

Hi There

So am both parent and SLT. Sounds like she has got good foundations in terms of what we call phonological awareness (my 3 y.o. can't do most of what you describe but am not worried about that yet). But missing initial sounds completely? Or substituting them with another sound? Is it all sounds? I would refer - you can self refer to most SLT services. But sounds like she will respond well to a little block of intervention or a home pack to work on to support it. She doesn't seem aware and this is a good thing. Keep repeating back the words to her with the correct sounds in it and try not to correct her or point it out if that makes sense. SO when she says "up" instead of "cup" then say "you want your cup" and not "its not up its cup". Hope that helps...

Thanks so much for the response! Yes it's missing the consonants totally off the start of a lot of words and is quite random and not linked to a specific letter eg yellow becomes 'ellow', wellies become 'ellies' and little becomes 'ittle'. It's fairly consistent ie if she does it for a specific word she will do it most times but not necessarily linked with not being able to sound that letter as she'll say other words starting with that letter fine. I cringe when people call kids 'lazy' for not being able to talk but I do think there is a motivational element with her. Eg last night she mumbled something something 'dicker' which is how she says sticker and I said I was really sorry I can't understand and she got cross and said 'i mean I 'ant a STicker' and said it perfectly I guess that's a good sign as she'll eventually be more motivated to speak well to interact with peers etc. BP's do have mild LD but I'm really not too concerned that there's much of an intellectual element to this really as she comes across as really quite smart (yeh I know all parents think that lol) but I guess in a way I'm MORE worried that she's so aware of the process of reading etc as it's surely going to frustrate and demotivate her more if she 'gets it' but just can't distinguish the sounds if that makes sense. She's never been one for imitating much and can sometimes be difficult about making eye contact too (although is otherwise super social and socially aware so not too concerned about ASD) so that probably doesn't help. I also wonder if she had a bowt of glue ear as an infant. She didn't babble until almost 12MO and initial babbling came out a bit weird and like she was underwater. She had hearing tests which showed some mild hearing loss but apparently nothing that 'should' affect speech (I'm skeptical) and was discharged before age 2. I wonder if it's worth asking for her to be tested again? I will definitely be seeking speech tx. I do what you've advised and we read tonnes of books etc. If there's any resources for any at home speech tx you know of though then I'd really appreciate that xx

I think if there was glue ear then this makes lots of sense. Some of the sounds we wouldn’t expect til much later (y/ sk/st etc) it feels like she’s doing ok. But some SLT advice will put your mind at rest.

Update. I've had a chat with the HV who was lovely. My little madam even had a conversation with her all about how she got some new chocolate buttons because I ate her other ones She's supported nursery doing assessments and referring for SLT etc and she's going to refer her to repeat the hearing test