Well Comm language assessment?

[HH1982]

Hello

At parents evening, DS preschool teacher said she had done the Well Comm language assessment on him and he was at stage 5 when he should be at 7, which is amber? He is being referred onto SLT I think for a 6 week course.

It was a very rushed conversation so I feel a bit in the dark. Do any teachers here have experience of this assessment and what the stages mean and could tell me more? DS is 3 years and 7 months. Thank you!

Anyone? Basically wondering how worried I should be?

Well Comm is brilliant. It was written / devised by SaLTs and they worked together with Nurseries to trial it.
Some Nurseries use it with children when they have concerns about their language, but quite a few Nurseries I know assess all their dc against it.
It works well for Nurseries because there is a 'Big Book of Activities' which means the Nursery staff can deliver activities to help every child, whatever stage they are at, long before they get to see a SaLT (In our area, you wait something like 5 months for an initial SaLT appt and then, if you meet their really high criteria, you can then wait another year before intervention. What this does is give the Nursery staff interventions recommended by SaLTs right from the outset). Obviously this benefits the children massively.
It also benefits the SaLT service, as fewer people need to be referred.
Then, in the case of someone like your ds, they can refer in to SaLT, being able to say 'This' is where we think he is... 'This' is the area of communication we have concerns about...... 'These' are the strategies we have already tried.

Now, where I work, it is down to individual Nurseries to buy in the Well Comm package and there is no automatic promise of a package from SaLT, so it sounds like your area must have bought in Well Comm as a whole authority or something and set up a system whereby they can then get a package of SaLT report to follow on. Sounds brilliant

I can't recall 'stage 5' 'Stage 7' specifically - I tend to work in '12 - 17months' / '18-23months' etc.

What you should do though, is ask to have a word on another day.... say it came a bit of a surprise and was a bit rushed on Parents evening and could you possibly have 5mins another day for them to explain it more clearly to you.