Speech and language report.

[NatalieJane]

We finally got the report last night, it had been posted through the wrong door with just our door number and street name on the envelope, which I wasn't very pleased about, but that is by the by.

The things I could do with a translation on if anyone can help are:

"George has a good range on consonant sounds that he uses at the start of a word. His use of sounds in the middle and the end of the word is significantly disordered. George's inconsistant use use of the correct vowel will also effect his intelligibility."

'His intelligibility', does that mean what he says is hard for others to understand, or that it is hard for him to understand what other's say, because they say things differently to him? Or something else?!

"George's speech system is significantly disordered. Disordered errors are unlikely to resolve with speech therapy, and can impact with aquisition of literacy.

Recommended Management/Agreed Action:

Waiting list for individual speech therapy..."

If speech therapy won't help him, why has she put him on the waiting list? And if speech therapy won't help, what else will help?

Obviously, I am going to contact the SALT and ask her the above, but I won't be able to until lunch time, so wondered if any of you lovely lot would know anything?

Talk about jargon!!!

No help I am afraid but you should definately phone at the earliest opportunity.

not sure this will be any help, but, "George has a good range on consonant sounds that he uses at the start of a word. His use of sounds in the middle and the end of the word is significantly disordered. George's inconsistant use use of the correct vowel will also effect his intelligibility." my ds1 (10) has this to a lesser degree if I've understood properly. Say for eg he wants to say 'bed', often what he actually says is 'bad' or 'bat', it changes the meaning of the sentence and means he is often misunderstood. For some reason he doesn't easily hear the different vowel sounds in the middle of the words, and if he can't tell what the sound is that's said to him then he can't then say it back himself. Does that make any sense at all?

as far as literacy goes, reading has been very hard work, phonics has been very difficult for him. He knows all his letter sounds, will happily sit there and sound a word out letter by letter but then can't blend the sounds to make the word, works the same for spelling, we've had more success with whole word recognition. Tbh, he hasn't had speech therapy for years, it didn't really achieve much if anything, it's got better as he's got older and he's had a lot of extra help from the learning support service which has helped more. That said, I don't know if that says more about the quality of the salt he had as they really weren't interested in trying to work out exactly what his issues are.

it sounds like they are already trying to set up reasons why salt won't work so you don't have any expectation of them, I think I'd be quite wary about that.

intelligibility is definitely how he sounds - if it affected how he understood others it would be understanding, lol

as for the unlikely to be resolved and literacy bit, DS was fairly similar, random vowels, lol, but he also had some consonants missing, consonant blends were a big issue as well

it's definitely impacted on literacy, he can't spell, I mean really really can't spell, he'll be 15 next month and the last spelling test he had gives him a spelling age of 5.5

he was late to read, he really struggled with phonics as well - but he had learning support (with various strategies) and once he understood what to do he caught up nearly immediately, his reading age on starting secondary was 2 years above his actual age

he had 2? years of one on one SALT and then 6 years of SALT in school and it definitely made a difference, especially the first few years, but it's not resolved - strangers now understand him, lol, occasionally he has to be reminded to slow down and pronounce things a bit clearer but on the whole it's fine - however, it is still immediately noticeable that he has a speech problem

So it's not so much that SALT won't work rather than it won't completely fix it to the point where there's no difference between his speech and a child who never had to have SALT

Sorry, haven't had chance to get back on to see if anyone had replied Thank you though :)

I have managed to speak to the SALT, she explained about the illtelligibility thing, and you were all right, it is how other's understand him, and the last bit, fortunately is a mistake, it should read "Disordered errors are unlikely to resolve with speech therapy, and can impact without aquisition of literacy." She is going to send a corrected report out to everyone!

Right, now that is sorted onto the next mission: statutary assessment, doesn't bloody stop does it?!

Thanks again everyone :o

LOL Bloody hell, it should read: "Disordered errors are unlikely to resolve without speech therapy, and can impact with aquisition of literacy."

That'll teach me for rushing!

Well that's much better then, lol

having said about DS's speech not being completely resolved - SALT did make a huge huge difference