How to go about getting a verbal dyspraxia assesment? Anybody know about Nuffield?

[osospecial]

Hi, dd is due to see paed again in April/May time. She has been put on 2 year waiting list for asd panel 6 months ago. Paed basically said she didn't think it's asd but couldnt rule it out at this stage either, she has asd traits but doesn't tick all the boxes so wants to see if social side improves as her speech does. She is currently attending an assesment unit. She only has a handfull of words (quite unclear) but babbles constantly. She also ticks some boxes for verbal dyspraxia but I don't know that much about this and I'm wondering about asking paed for some kind of assesment to be done for this. So far dd hasn't really had any proper assesment done at all. I've been reading some old threads on here about VD and saw posts about dc being referred to Nuffield for an assesment.

How old is your dd? The Nuffield usually won't see anyone until they are 3. Have a look at their website for referal details as they are quite specific. Can you get a private assessment done? Many speech therapists are reluctant to dx for verbal dyspraxia as they are inexperienced in this. My ds was seen at the Nuffield when he was 3. They are amazing

Hi my son was seen there when he was three and they were great They also picked up the asd that local paed said he didn't have. He was diagnosed with autism a few months later.

Similar to autumnsmum we took DD there (aged around 5/6yrs?) and they picked up on issues other than her speech, eventually she was diagnosed with ASD. Our rationale for going there was to clarify if her issues were all down to her poor speech production or whether they felt there were other factors involved. In our case they gave us enough evidence of other issues to finally persuade the right teams to actually see DD locally and help with the diagnoses she now has. I asked the GP to refer for us but had private speech therapy and NHS therapy reports to send along with that referral too to prove what we knew so far and had been doing.

In our PCT age is the determining factor as to whether you are referred. After age 8, the criteria changes.
Our paed referred to SALT for this after 8 and we were told that he did not meet criteria but that we could try for a referral to adult services!

Ok thanks that sounds really interesting, dd is 3.5 and so would prob be 4 before she actually gets seen. I couldnt find their website yesterday but will try again now.

Just found the referral guidelines, can I ask how much speech your dc had when going there? It says: The children referred should meet the following criteria:

make frequent production errors, so their speech is difficult to understand

have some spoken output (at least 20-30 spoken labels or attempts at words used regularly

be aged 3 years or more

have received at least one course of speech and language therapy locally, targeting speech

I think dd meets all these as she just about has the 20-30 words used regularly but with prompting ifyswim and some of these are quite unclear, she does have speech therapy too. She does babble constantly though so if these are attempts at words, they are unclear and there is lots of different sounds there.

My ds had a block of therapy one session a week for six weeks and another block a year later. You din't automatically get therapy it depends on what you are being offered locally. If you have any inkling it's verbal dyspraxia do push for a referal. They are pure experts in speech production and the therapist we saw was the best I have ever seen and got great results from my son. If you want to email me do

Thanks Janx, we live in Wales so prob couldn't do therapy once a week for a set period, I hear they do 1 week in school holidays so this may be an option if we were offered any therapy. My main objective is to get the assesment though as at least I would know then what is going on with dd and if it's VD behind her speech problems or not. I haven't heared of anywhere closer to us that offers VD assesment but I will have to ask her speech therapist just in case, having said that I don't mind travelling to London as the Nuffield does sound very good.

We did a week intensive there as well. Good luck - you could give them a call and ask for some advice