IS this progress?!

[used2bthin]

Just got DD's SALT report back-school had asked her to do it as they are building evidence to ask for more hours on the statement.

DD last had an assessment a year and a half ago and was 1st centile for everything. This time (now aged 5.5) she is still first centile for everything. So still has severe expressive and receptive language difficulties and speech sound difficulties. But under child's progress she has written dd has developed in her abilities to use verbs following high levels of 1.1 support throughout the school day and that her attention and listening skills have improved. Also that she is making progress in instructions when in a quiet setting.

This is ok news in terms of evidence building for the statement isn't it? But I am confused about the progress thing-is she simply pointing out that the support is what is helping her make progress or saying she has made progress? And has she, given that she is still the same score for everything.

Pretty grim reading today tbh-had been to ante natal yoga and was feeling calmer after issues with school and behaviour management but now not so good!

I read it as pointing out that under 1 to 1 support improvements have been made. So I would say it was in support of 1 to 1 continuing. If she is still in the 1st centile and that is mentioned it still shows that she is in need of full support :)

Thanks coff33pot. Yes they want full support for her for when she goes into year one, they've got this report, a psychology one and OT one so hopefully we will get what she needs.

I wonder how many children at her level manage at mainstream though. It is a worry.

Yes it is a worry. But look at it this way......if she has already made improvement with support then that shows she is being cared for and is happy. You can add to this at home by following some of the suggestions from the psych and the OT too to up her chances of survival :)

Sounds like the school want to help her so that in itself is a good thing.

If she is still first centile, not less than first centile, she has made progress along the first centile line, which goes up with age. So she's still obviously scoring very low for a child her age, but a year ago 99/100 children age 4.5 would score higher than her, now 99/100 children a year older, age 5.5, would score higher than her. Does that make any sense? So she's making progress, she isn't falling further behind but she isn't catching up.

Yes other than them not knowing how to manage some of the behaviour stuff (and they will be getting advice on that so its no big deal) they have been very supportive. They did have a s and l trained TA but she has just left and I think a lot rides on who the 1.1 person is so we will see but you are right its good news that she has made some progress.

Ellenjane we must have x posted I didn't see yours earlier sorry! Yes that does make sense and I was trying to explain that to my dad earlier! So yes she is progressing just staying at the same low level for her age.

She's had quite a lot of input along the way so I wonder whether she will always be this far behind. But I know this is one of the things we can't know yet. I can't help but wonder how she'd be doing if she was in a speech and language unit/other special school. But again pointless me wondering as there is nothing apprpriate here for her.

Is 1st centile the lowest possible score does anyone know? Sorry stupid question I think! Presumably it is?

i was not given an exact percentile for DD1 ( autism) but was told that she is under the first percentile. i remember also having read on this board percentiles for speech/language that were lower than 1st percentile such as 0.1 percentile or 0.4 percentile.
hth

used2bthin

On my APD assessment for one issue I did not register anything at all so a zero percentile, forgotten what it was. (short term memory probably lol)

Ah yes actually DD's head size is 0.4th centile (compared with 90 something height!) so I should have thought of that. Thanks. Last assessment they "aged" her for various things, I thought they would do it again as this was Reynards assessment again and think it was then too, not sure. Not sure why I want things in ages it just seems to mean more to me than the centile thing. Or I am feeling self torturous!

hi dolfrog! Just been to a talk on very interesting research about speech and lang type stuff,about eye tracking.

just thought re ages, at least if dd's age for stuff had gone up (which presumably it has if she#s stayed same centile)it may look a bit more like progress to me.

you can score under the first centile - my ds' first proper language assessment (CELF, at 3.5 years), didn't score him he was un-testable. 6 months later he was between the 0.1-0.4th centiles, 6 months after that he made it to the 1st centiles & now finally after two years he's above the 2nd centile for everything (massive spread of 2nd - 34th centiles).

They were all set to have him in mainstream well below first centile.

Yes, I wasn't sure if they would score at less than 1st centile, which was why I asked. Makes sense though, as the distribution curve gets very shallow at the edges. That just means that the variation between 1st and 2nd centile can be quite a lot, but the variation between 25th and 26th would be very little. There will be a big difference in the raw score between 0.4th centile and 1st centile, hard to explain without a graph, and I'm in danger of getting very boring...

In other words, being at the 1st centile is unlikely to be the lowest score, so as long as she is maintaining the 1st centile, she is making progress. Phew!

architheuthis that is great about your son moving up the centiles- did he go to mainstream?

I think I had hoped she was moving up the centiles, catching up as she seems to me to be talking much more even though her behaviour is worse by equal measures! But yes she is making progress otherwise she'd have gone down in the centiles.