Private SALT

[ProfessorGambol]

My DS6 has some speech sound difficulties. His language is fine, but he cannot say /k/ or /g/, struggles with /l/ (which I know is pretty common at his age) and some of his vowel sounds are a bit funny. He can hear the difference between/k/ and /t/, but cannot form the /k/ sound at all.

School have put in a SALT referral twice now, and both times it has been rejected. In Reception, they said his speech wasn’t far enough behind, and now they say he doesn’t need direct therapy at this time. They’ve just sent us some barrier games to practise saying the correct sound, eg coat vs coke, but I feel pretty frustrated, because he knows which sound it should be, he just can’t bloody do it. They’ve said if we practise for 3 months with no improvement, we can put in another referral.

So - should we just do the practice and apply again in 3 months, or do you think it’s worth investigating private speech therapy? I’m assuming it will be fairly expensive, and don’t know how many sessions he would need.

Anybody any experience of private SALT? Would love to hear your experiences or suggestions.

Hopeful bump…anybody got any experience or advice?

We had a recent private SALT assessment done and it was £75. We also were not sure whether additional support would be required - turns out it was a bit borderline. We will probably go ahead with sessions through the end of the school year and then reassess. There was no obligation to continue on to private therapy, but at least we have professional input on how much of a concern / what to do about it.

Hi OP, I'm a SLT. If you're interested in the private route, Google 'ASLTIP' - Association of Speech and Language Therapists in Independent Practice. You can search for a SLT who is local to you. SLTs have a wide range of specialisms, so you're looking for someone who specialises in speech sounds or general paeds.

Thanks. There are a few in my area. I’m a teacher, so feel like I have a pretty good understanding of what his difficulties are (I do the initial assessments with kids in my own class that we need to refer), just can’t decide whether to wait and re-refer in 3 months, or go private and hopefully get the help he needs sooner.

In our area you can self refer to SALT or go via the GP/health visitor

Has your child had a recent hearing test?

We got someone privately for my son and it made so much difference. It was worth every penny hos confidence improved by so much afterwards and you wouldn't know now. Start the earlier the better, it was definitely an investment rather than an expense and after 3 months it was fixed. Give it a try OP and stick with it. It was money well spent

Just to add I was told the younger they start the easier it is to correct, so I'd start sooner rather than wait again

His hearing is fine, had the check in Reception at school and all normal. I believe that in my area it’s only under 5s where you can self refer, and after that it’s expected to be through school.

I’m leaning towards finding someone privately I think. Thanks.

Gah, although I’ve just looked at one of these local to me and an initial assessment is £200! That is a lot more than I was expecting!

I'm a SALT. I didn't post on this for a while as I was conflicted. On one hand, vowel errors are a bit concerning and could do with being looked at. It's a more unusual error that you don't see much unless a child has apraxia. On the other hand, /k/ and /g/ is of less concern to me. It's a delay but a common one. It's also one that can be relatively hard to teach as the child can't see what is happening.

The difficulty is assessment is often expensive as it's time consuming, plus purchasing the assessment tools is expensive. However you already have a good idea of the problem and it is only in one area by the sounds of it. You might get lucky and find an SLT who would do an hourly rate, especially if you don't need a report, but availability is hard at the moment. Sometimes asking on local groups etc can help.

Where I am, we would see you on the NHS. If I were seeing you privately I would be happy for you to pay by hour and do a shorter assessment. However I am not registered with ASLTIP, as I only do bits of private work alongside my NHS. (This sounds like a sales pitch, which it is not meant to be, I am just outlining there are sometimes other options).

You could try some techniques at home for making /k/:

• Talk about front and back sounds
• Use a tongue depressor e.g. lolly stick or spoon handle to hold down the front of the tongue
• Try lying on your back so the tongue goes back more naturally
• Try the sound on it's own or with 'open back' vowels e.g. ah (I think!). You can Google the vowel chart which helps with this

Ideally you would have someone to help you through this, but you might be able to do enough yourself to get you started until you can be seen on the NHS. If you do contact an SLT, they might agree to just a few sessions to start you off with some bits to practise at home. If you do see someone, make sure they look at the vowels. It's something we see much less and can be forgotten about often.

There was a lot of fence sitting in that answer, good luck deciding!

What ever you do make sure if you pay for a private assessment make sure they can do the therapy after! We have paid out twice (different children) to a very well known highly recommended person but once the assessment is done - she has refused to do the therapy after - very naughty! So she obviously gets a higher wage for assessments than therapy!

£200 cheap - I'm sure the easier child assessment was £400.

Make sure your child has 2 front teeth too - we had to wait 6 months for them to grow 😂

Sorry to hijack your thread OP - but could I ask the SALTs on here whether they would recommend private SALT for my DD(10) who mixes up 'th', 'f', 'd' and 'g' (she also can't hear the difference, when I ask her) and has recently been diagnosed with dyslexia?

No one seems to be suggesting NHS SALT. Her dyslexia assessor said that we could do private SALT, but didn't particularly push it. She seemed to see it as a separate issue, and thought DD had enough on her plate without working on her speech at the same time! But my parents in France say that dyslexic children over there are routinely given SALT - so I wonder whether it would actually help her dyslexia?

She isn't bothered by how she speaks (perhaps because she can't hear it!) and she's understandable so the main purpose would be to help with her dyslexia.

Would I need an assessment for her? Or could/should we try for hourly lessons as suggested for OP? (Given that she's already had the dyslexia assessment)

Sorry to hijack OP! To make up for it, I'll remind you to watch out for dyslexia as your DS gets older, since speech difficulties are a possible red flag (which I wish I'd known). Although hopefully since your DS can hear the sounds, he won't have that difficulty.

@ChristmasLightsAndSparkles is she able to articulate those sounds if you ask her to copy them in isolation e.g. 'can you say /d/?'. It sounds like she could benefit from some minimal pairs therapy to differentiate the sounds e.g. a picture of go/dough and you say 'which is go?'.

In my experience the speaking issues tend to sit with SALT, unless the speaking errors are based on reading issues (errors reading words aloud etc) BUT I am not an expert in dyslexia.

This is frustrating. Personally I think it is cheeky to overcharge for an assessment. Of course they often take a bit longer to score up, write a report etc but often not as long as the price suggests! It's doubly cheeky to not then offer the therapy needed afterwards!

Defo! And the second child was a tribunal EHCP case so it was £1200 plus and she's super well known - so naughty!!!!

My son had a known hearing difficulty before starting Reception and passed the screening test when he came to school! His regular tests with audiology told a very different story. He's in year 4 now and most likely going to need hearing aids.

Highly recommend getting a private SALT if you can afford it. My sons been seeing his for over a year now and she has been absolutely incredible for him. He sees her for an hour once a week and she provides regular comms plan for school to work with.

I just asked her to make each of those sounds in isolation, @BendingSpoons and interestingly she was able to do 'd' and 'g' quite easily, so presumably it's just habit that she pronounces 'the' as 'ge'. I never knew! She made an effort to copy my mouth shape when doing 'th' and 'f', and there was a difference between them... but really they both came out as variants of 'f'.

I'll try doing that with picture pairs with her, and see how she gets on.

I'm still trying to understand her dyslexia and how to help her. Her assessment found that her phonological awareness was very weak - especially segmenting and blending non-words. It seems that she has mainly learned to read through memorizing whole words visually rather than reading the sounds - and it seems logical to me that if she can't hear the difference between them well - or speak the difference inside her head - then that will make it harder for her to do phonics. But maybe I'm clutching at straws! I really want to help her, but I'm struggling to get a clear idea of how!

Unless she had specifically said she would do direct ongoing therapy afterwards it isn’t really ‘naughty’. Some professionals only do assessments, more common when they do Tribunal standard reports.

My DD is hearing impaired and has LD. We had a private SALT for years and she made an enormously beneficial impact on my daughter's vocabulary, understanding of speech, and self confidence. When we finally had to stop seeing her my DD, the SALT and I were all in tears! The good ones are so worth it.

This is so helpful, thank you! I’ve contacted a few local SLTs. There’s one with availability but it’s £100 a session, so we’ll need to think carefully about whether we can afford that.

Will definitely try those exercises in the meantime though, thanks so much.

The vowels are a bit funny- like sometimes he would say bard, when he means bird for instance.