Use of PECS with child with some vocals

[Hurricane74]

Hi, my DS who is 3 and suspected ASD will speak single words, especially if prompted and in context. Six months ago the SaLT introduced PECS at preschool and at home to help him communicate and encourage interaction. At preschool it is mainly used at snack time, I never really used them at home because they only gave us about three cards and he could say the words they represented anyway and I prefer to encourage vocals. My issue at the moment is the SALT has left and not been replaced yet and nobody has been out to review him for some time and I am concerned the continued use of PECS at preschool is actually holding back his language because I suspect they aren't always promoting him to say the word as well and it's probably easier for him to pass them a card rather than make the effort to talk. Has anyone else had any experience of PECS with a child who can use some vocals. Is it worthwhile continuing with it? I have discussed my concerns with preschool but suspect they don't want to abandon PECS altogether because SALT had advised it and they haven't been told it's ok to stop by a professional.

I think that the argument around PECS is that it is useful as a way of encouraging communication and enables children to communicate their needs. I know how you feel about the verbal side though as my dd was and is v similar. She now has a massive vocab of single words and some short phrases. I think that with her we are now at the point where PECs is pretty redundant as she is persistent and v independent in communicating what she wants. She now either types words or say the things she wants or needs. You might want to consider getting someone in to assess where he is at and to give some up to date advice on this. When dd was at this kind of in between stage you are describing I went along with PECS as advised but I also spent masses of time teaching her to label and understand as any nouns as I could. She was also encouraged to make short sentences using an I want card where she assembled it and then was prompted to say each word before the requested item was handed over. This worked really well and I think was a bit of a bridge to doing this independently. She was also taught to put in qualifiers eg I want the red crisps or whatever it was. She now has a kind of PECs app called proloquo2go but she mainly uses it to type text now.