Speech Delay/Specific Language Impairment

[Mumtoprem]

I hope someone on here can help as I am so confused about what to do for my daughter.

My daughter is 3.5 and was born prematurely at 25 weeks and has had a number of developmental delays since birth. Now she is 3 years 6 months and her main delay is in speech. She has a number of words but doesn't really hold proper conversations with you or talk in sentences. Her pronounciation can also be unclear. Educational Psychologist reckons she is about 1-1.5 years behind her peers especially in expressive language. Speech Therapy have mentioned specific language impairment.

She is currently on Early Years Action Plus and attends nursery part time and is obviously behind her peers at nursery in speech and language. She doesn't really talk to the other children at nursery and seems to struggle with her confidence.

I'm told she doesn't qualify for a statement and she will stay on Early Years Action Plus at school.

Does anyone have any advice on whether to try and push for a statement? Does this sound like specific language impairment to you or just delayed speech?

Thanks
Michelle

I obviously forgot to mention we are seeing SALT both in nursery and at clinic and have attended Makaton and Attention and Listening classes. Been seeing them for about a year.

I'm told SA+ qualifies her for 7 hours a week of extra help and she would get a speech programme. Apparently to get a statement here she would have to be operating at a developmental level below age 2. They reckon she is 2-2.5.

Well I can't tell you whether she needs a statement or not, although children are needing them increasingly due to cuts being made and LA's getting rid of provision that isn't bound by law to be delivered such as it is in statements.

But I do know that you have been lied to about thier 'criteria' for statements and that in itself should send warning signals that they are not being honest with you and can't be trusted for their opinion.

Mumtoprem

you might like to have a look at What Causes Specific Language Impairment in Children? and Specific Language Impairment (SLI) a collection of research papers

zzzzz

I have a PubMed collection of research papers by Dorothy Bishop
(when you get to the PubMed web page, if you click on "Sorted by Recently Added" from the drop down menu you can select "Date Pub" which will ten sort the collection of research papers by year of publication, this years papers first. Free PMC Article means free full text available)
I hope this helps

zzzzz

I thought you might like to have a look at the CiteULike Group: Speech and Langauge Pathology - library 224 articles collection of research papers, which includes quite a few articles about Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and how it relates to other issues

www.talkingpoint.org.uk/Parent/Speech%20and%20Language/Some-Children-Struggle/About%20SLI.aspx

This is an excellent website and parent/professional friendly - I hope it helps