DD is in reception. She has a mild hearing loss managed with hearing aids and has/had a severe speech and language problem. The hearing loss was diagnosed very late and a huge amount of damage has been done to her social communication and understanding skills. She has been discharged from LEA SLT as since hearing aids her speech now meets their minimal functional standard. She does see a therapist privately every couple of weeks.
However, although she can now speak and construct a sentence she can't use her speech in any useful social way (eg can't find language quickly enough to join in games, often uses language completely out of context and her speech sometimes becomes completely untintelligible with the stress etc).
Reception has not been a success. She seems completely isolated at school and is starting to misbehave, and has switched off from learning at school, although is happily learning to read with me at home.
Almost everyday I get a call/email from the teacher to advise another list of bad behaviour (eg screaming at another girl to go away, emptying the bookcase and refusing to put the books back, refusing to sit on the carpet or join an activity and sitting in a corner, occasionally hitting refusing to come in after break). There's no suggestion of what the school are doing to help and when I ask I am just told she needs a lot of attention and they don't have that kind of time.
I'm not sure what they want me to do with this information. It seems that they are very frustrated but also very passive. I'm never told what they are trying to do to help. Her IEP is very vague, lots of 'try to support littleplimpton in.....'
She was in a very good nursery 3 days a week prior to reception (they picked on the hearing issues), behavioural issues weren't raised at all, other than it was clear her social skills were very undeveloped and she preferred to play alone so she didn't have to speak. They were very helpful though and she made progress which has now gone backwards.
I know its harder to recognise in girls but I don't think she is on the spectrum, she attends dance, swimming and rides horses outside school and plays happily with her old nursery friends. She is very happy outside school in general and apart from the language skills not really different to DD1.
She's on the school SEN register but this doesn't seem to equate to concrete help and I'm getting very tired of hearing a long list of DDs failings and how hard it is to deal with her with no indication of what they are doing to help. I do ask and am told in varying ways that they just don't have time.
We will apply for an EHCP but the delays on everything are huge. Just advised we have an 18 week wait to see a paediatrician, similar for EP, and then obviously they all need to make their assessments and then there's the actual application process so nothing at all this school year and some way into next, if at all.
I'd love to hear any feedback on what is reasonable to expect the school to put in place in the meantime.