Sleepwalking into a disaster with SEN

[IanCurtisdancing]

DD was referred for speech therapy by the HV in September 2022. She waited 8 months for the assessment in April 2023, and then finally, we began our course of NHS SALT therapy today. A waitlist time of 18 months,

What an absolute fucking shambles.

A teams meeting with seven other mums and two SALT co-ordinators. They didnt have strong enough internet connection, they couldnt share the screen for the PowerPoint, they couldn't get the videos to play, couldn't get the audio to work.

It was 60 minutes of 'Sorry, can you see that? Sorry, is it playing?'

Each of our children are at different points with their development so there was nothing in common they could really cover.

We now get 4 sessions with a speech therapist and then that's it. Good luck kids. Off you go.

18 months fucking wait for this.

We are fortunate, we can scramble together some money to pay for some more private therapy but its fucking expensive. What about all the other kids? This is all they get?

Are we now sleepwalking into another educational disaster where there is not enough funding for early intervention and we will see more and more children struggle in the mainstream, more and more absence, and then the knock on effect as they reach adulthood?

Why the fuck do we not invest in our children?

AIBU to think that we need a radical change to stop us sleepwalking into a disaster?

How though? I’m not being difficult just asking.

Years ago I taught a boy who had a speech issue. After several months he got an initial speech appointment, oh we think it is his hearing. months later a hearing test. Oh he might need grommets we need to wait to see. Months later retested .
It ended up being nearly 18mths before he was diagnosed with significant hearing loss in one side and slight loss in the other.
That was a yr and a half he struggled in early schooling. The effects that has on young kids is immense.

OP I really feel for you (and the others posting similar). I know the NHS is massively overstretched, but by NOT dealing with these things early and quickly it is costing us so much more, both financially and in the mental health of our children, in the years that come.

SaLT here. Our local community paeds service doesn’t offer intervention at all and hasn’t done since before Covid. There is a recruitment and retention crisis in our profession - the situation is very bleak. It’s a shame as we are a highly skilled workforce who can make such a difference if we were adequately resourced. I’m so sorry this was your experience.

I don't think we are sleepwalking into it, we are already in it, schools are full of children with unmet needs. The government thinks giving teachers a performance management target of 'progress of children with SEN' each year is going to fix it all. If only it were that easy to do in a class of 32 where half the students have a different need.

@GoodnightAdeline I agree, although I appreciate this is entirely separate to the point of this thread, it would be interesting in future to see if studies are done on what's caused a societal rise in the need for these services. The fact they are unavailable in my opinion is entirely linked to the sad state of local council finances and unfortunately probably will only get worse.

The impact covid had in my area was that there were a whole cohort of mums who were kicked out of hospital and then couldnt access health visiting service. They got a phonecall noyhing else. People think health visitors do little but they were very often the people who picked up problems early and then referred to other services, then before school even started SaLT might have been up running. Even the newborn hearing checks and the pre school checks stopped.

The salts also stopped face to face clinics and started online things with tiny children and it wasnt as good.

I also think parents didnt have normal to reference against as they werent out and about as much and also lots of things like church toddler groups folded. The volunteers didnt come back. These were where lots of youngster practiced language and where parents sought advice.

But there also was an issue before covid with rising language issues and i dont know the cause.

My own daughter (the reason I went back to retrain) lost a good year of speech therapy progress during the lockdowns - despite having a mum who was an ex primary teacher, then a student SALT and absolutely everything that would tick all the boxes from a home environment to support language development. I simply could not become all the different levels of language that she experienced on a school day as a one-woman band and she regressed massively.

She's clawed it back - but as a combination of being a tenacious stubborn daughter of a tenacious stubborn mother. Friend's daughter had a couple of SALT sessions - in the middle of a bloody field. It did not work well.

As for vacancies - we're currently 3 full time staff members down and can't fill the posts... I'm currently doing 3 people's jobs in an area with massive massive deprivation and social problems and I'll burn out eventually if I keep on at that pace. It's the same everywhere.

There are a couple of universities who have just started SLT degree courses - but they'll take a couple of years to start producing graduates into the system and placements are the real logjam when everywhere's running with massive vacancy rates anyway so people are doing multiple people's jobs filling in holes to start with. I stick with it because I love my colleagues and client group - but it's not a fun place to be at work at the moment.

@CoffeeWithCheese I know lots just left NHS and do private SALT work. Enough clients for it what with the state of NHS provision.
Surely the graduates will also need on the job training and that's not going to happen with the lack of NHS SALTs

Oh I get messages every day from private companies who'd like to recruit me - but unfortunately I love my own little area of SLT which is adult LD - and that's pretty much NHS, or care-chain providers. Actually I really like the team I work with as well but that's another story.

There was one NHS trust who wanted me to join on graduation but they didn't have the available staffing to cover newly qualifieds at the time.

My 4y6m DS was referred aged 3 and has had his assessment and just one speech therapy session in that time. I actually first raised concerns about his speech at 27 months. I believe he has 3 separate diagnoses contributing to his speech delay, one of which is glue ear. He's been waiting for grommets for a year as well. So yeah it's horrendous.

We're now running at a 40% vacancy rate in my team. The fact we've kept the service running as well as we have done so far is a bloody miracle.