SLTs are ganging up on us

[zakmum]

Yesterday we had a meeting at the school with independent slt and two pct's slts.Dd is 8yrs old and is non-verbal, she was granted an hour per week slt provision at the tribunal.We have been working on her vocal sounds since last year at home and she has made good progress meaning she can say her phonics now .
We asked the independent slt to add working on her speech in her weekly program. She asked school's slts to come on the meeting and they all said that it is against the speech therapy's guidelines to work on an autistic child's speech and we are only allowed to work on her functional communication and if someone is doing this privately they are going against the guidelines. They also said if she is to speak she will do it because of pecs anyway.
I am confused because on one hand they are saying that she is so retarted that their is no point working directly on her speech and on the other hand they are saying that she might speak without intensive input. The senco said to us that we should respect the proffesionals and give up on this idea but carry on working at home on her speech.
I told senco that they can't take any credit for her speech in future and she said we will because she will speak due to pecs.They are all covering for each other and I am feeling very alone and helpless. instead of helping us these people are telling us not to do anything for your child. Any views on the matter.

I like PECS, but I think the problem with it is that it's assumed to be a stepping stone with speech appearing like magic, or if it doesn't then it's assumed that PECS provides a child with everything they need be because they're not capable of anything else.. DS1 cannot talk and PECS helps him show us what he wants, but it's not moving him on and it's not providing a system that can communicate what he wants. He has outgrown PECS (imo) but there is nothing to move onto.

I agree with that - PECS is intended to be the child's total communication system but is stuck at a low level and does not provide much more than a basic showing/requesting system. I don't think though that many PECS SLTs really expect PECS to kick start speech (though this may happen). I don't think of myself as being in denial about the extent of DS1's language problems but even he can say more than PECS ! - which is a bit scary really.

I'm no expert but it does seem such a shame the professionals are unwilling to work on vocalisation as well as PECs, you'ld think it was common sense to go for total communication . IME of private SALT I was under no pressure to share her reports with the NHS dept, the initial report I did share as it was written with a view to making sure DS got a paed asd assessment, and private SALT had no desire to meet with NHS SALT, so sounds you've been unfortunate.

Private slt is working in dd's school and so are nhs slts,Private one refused to work on her vocals and she invited the other slts to back her up in the meeting against us. Lea are paying her so she always has been supportive to school and lea.