Does speech therapy work for speech delay?

[sapo2000]

Hi there! For those parents whose kids experienced speech delay, did speech therapy 1:1 help ? What was your experience? The speech therapist told me that the best speech therapists are the parents and there is no 1:1 speech therapy available on NHS.

Was it an NHS or private speech therapist? It could depend on different NHS trusts but in my trust we definitely still give 1:1 but it would depend on age of the child, whether 1:1 in clinic is suitable or a group setting for younger children. To get maximum effect, parents have to be fully on board, practising and using all resources given. The same commitment is needed from nursery/school if they attend also
It has to be a joint approach. It would be a short burst of intervention from NHS though with the expectation that they are starting the therapy and giving the advice for parents to continue that daily work.

Imo when there's general delay, learning to say specific sounds (which is what speech and language might focus on) isn't really that helpful.