Statement provision question, please help :-)

[Ineedmorepatience]

Hi my friends Dd who has just started nursery is doing 3 sessions per week in a school nursery and 3 in the committee based playgroup she attended last year. She has a statement and in part 3 has quantified SALT with a trained therapist. The school are saying that the SALT only attends the school on a day when she is not in, so they cant provide the SALT!!

Should the committee based playgroup try to get someone in to provide it or should school provide it on a day that she is there?

Hope someone can help

The local authority has the duty to provide what's in the statement. They will have a contract or agreement with NHS to provide SLT eg in nurseries. She should notify the sen officer the SLT in the statement can't be delivered in nursery and so needs to be delivered elsewhere eg at home, in playgroup or on a different day. They should commission services to meet needs, not make children fit their schedules round services. If the NHS can't do it the LA must pay a private SLT to do it. She could also ask for the provision to be given via direct payments and she can then choose and arrange the SLT herself. Ideally both settings and parents would get access to SLT, otherwise how are nursery staff going to implement language programmes?

I suspect the LA won't want to pay private or give direct payments and will tell NHS to sort it eg another therapist to come in on a different day etc.

It's not for the nursery to sort it out, the legal duty is with sen officer (assuming the SLT is in part 3 as education need)

If provision in a statement isn't made you can make a complaint to council using corporate complaint procedure and go to local govt ombudsman, I think IPSEA website has details of what to do / draft letter etc

Thankyou agnes I will pass that on to my friend