are child development centres/ teams often a bit...useless

[WrongWayWound]

Reflecting on this. DD is seen by a hospital pead, not quibbles at all.

The hv in may suggested a referral to the Child Development Centre. I was not really up for it for a few reasons, but said ok in the end. So end of July referred. September added to waiting list, October nurse visit. Not really feedback, just info gathering, not that two-way. End of November saw Pead, again questions and assessing rather than feedback mainly. Verbally said a few things, language skills year behind etc, but not scored all areas when there. No follow up letter or report so far, no whiff of support.

So 6/7 months on they've so far re-assessed her and repeated what the hospital already said, but in a cloak and dagger manner. The hospital are so clear with advice/ feedback follow up. They pushed to see her too, I asked to discharge her as I felt it repeated the hospital assessment, but they said no in a way that implied safe-guarding her.

That sounds odd. Our child development team were a nursery nurse and occupational therapist (we were already bring 'seen' by SALT). They visited us at home together and went into ds nursery a few times seperately, then came back to see just me. We got a report about a month later which was 3 sides of A4 then saw the peadiatrician again to discuss it.

My friend struggled through our local cdc!

Her Dd has Asd and a severe language disorder. The cdc team only seemed to be looking for classic signs of autism. My friend and I found a load of articles and info about how girls and some boys with Asd do not present in this way and we educated them

The paed was actually good if you could get to see her!

Good luck

No. We went private in the end. Needed someone who would actually speak to us and give us advice, not someone who would send us round the houses collecting data on him for months on end but never actually sharing it with us or telling us what we can do, just 'referring' us and putting us on people's caseloads with never-ending waiting lists that raised our expectations of what subsequently turned out to be very little and months of wasted opportunity for intervention.

After a private diagnosis the CDC people rubber stamped it.

Mixed reports, maybe they vary!

The annoying thing is the additional stress and promises, yet no support. DD had a diagnosis way before they were involved, though the speech is a later need that developed.

I found them very focused on questions about family and in particular childcare. I have quite informal childcare arrangements (friend) and I felt this was disapproved of. However I spent a very very long time arranging it, and I KNOW it's great for dd. Ironically she actually would have been at nursery as she had a settling in week at 9 months, and they said they couldn't meet her needs/ needed time to arrange things the DAY before I started back at work after having met her loads. I was forced into leaving her with a close neighbour (who is a wonderful friend and foster carer to babies, again I wouldn't settle for poor childcare!).

It's cheaper to find a family/relationship/home/sibling cause to a child's difficulties so they investigate those first.

What do you actually want from the process? I find that starting with the outcome you are looking for and working backwards often means you can sidestep a whole load of nonsense.

really... at this stage I don't want anything. She sees the consultant at a hospital, her delays are mild and she's making progress I feel equipped to support as she's only 2.

Maybe when she hits nursery/ education there might be needs, but 1:1 at home she's ok and made more progress than was expected.

www.earlyinterventionscotland.org/

This is a great organisation for support. They travel and some of them do consultancy all over the UK. Obviously they charge but their fees are better than most I have come across, and they certainly know their stuff.

You might also want to download the document contained in this request: www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/the_individual_assessment_of_ear#incoming-508346 as it is a comprehensive child development ticklist which you can also use as a curriculum to teach skills.