NHS salt and school salt

[Bugsymalonemumof2]

My 4 year old has a fairly severe speech disorder and has just started in reception. She has her NHS salt going in tomorrow to assess her and the school will also be putting her under their private salt too.

This is all new to me and I don't really know what to expect or more importantly what to be asking?
We had a horrible incident at the weekend at her ballet with another child teasing her for her speech so I'm very conscious of it now :(

You are very fortunate. Many families waiting for Salt assessment and intervention are on the end of a long waiting list, and you have two!

I would be asking : who will be assessing and working with your child, when and where will they be seeing your child, what arrangements will there be to inform you of how you can support them at home, who will be writing up the assessments, who will be sending you assessments and also informing your GP or consultant or whoever referred your child in the first place.

Are are you sure it is a school SALT and not the school SENDCO?

Thank you @viques that's pretty much articulated everything I need to know but couldn't put in words myself.

Yes they use pupil premium funds to fund a private SALT that comes in once a week. After 3 years under SALT she only ever gets 3 sessions per 3 months on the NHS which has been really hard to make progress so hoping that we will finally get some progress with it being more intensive

That sounds like a great use of pp! hope it helps your dd.

They will assess what kind of problem she has, explain it to you, & give you homework. Also they will liase with the school SLT to do exercises targetted at your child's difficulty. (ime)

That sounds rather unusual. Generally, the NHS SALT won’t see children if they are seeing a private SALT. I’ve never heard of a school funding a private SALT. You are very fortunate!

I think they split the cost of the private one with two other schools locally. The school have said they have to be firm that their SALT role is to support the NHS one and not to take the lead although the NHS do keep trying to discharge them from their service until the school kick up a stink.

She has a speech sounds disorder possibly verbal apraxia so her speech is really really hard to understand

ime, they will start by firming up her ability to hear the sounds correctly, then work on her seeing how other people produce the sounds (you do lots of getting her to see you talk), and then exercises to get her mouth to make the sounds. It's as fun and games based as possible.

There was a lad with terrible speech in DS's reception yr, he probably had apraxia. In SLT with DS. He came on enormously, sounded like any other kid by yr6.

I’ve never heard of a school funding a private SALT.

It's fairly common round here - or has been before the more recent rounds of cuts. NHS SaLT provision is so sparse, and of course speech difficulties impact so much on other learning, it's been good way to support the dc

They have done a similar thing at ds’s school, so he sees the NHS SALT for assessments and to set targets, has a 6 week block with an NHS speech therapist once a year, and then weekly group speech therapy with the private SALT they have bought in. He has daily speech working on his targets with a TA at school.

I would ask what areas they will be working on, how many targets will be set and how they should be worked on (at school and home for example...any resources needed etc) also whether there are any strategies the school could use to support her socialising with the other children (social skills groups to increase confidence). If your child has difficulty getting her needs across I would ask for strategies for the school to help her with this....does she need a card to ask for help for example.