How do I get moore speech therapy for my daughter ???

[mummyloveslucy]

My 3.5 year old has verbal dyspraxia. She see's a SALT once a week (if she can fit her in). I just feel as if it's just not enough. The nursery are very keen to help but after 1 day she has mastered her SALT homework and then there is a lot of time wasted.
The nursery are trying to start her on words that she has no chance of saying like"good morning, hello, goodbye"etc. They might think that these are basic words but Lucy just can't pronounce them correctly.
Does anyone know how I could get her more speech therapy, prefrubly without paying for it.
Or if there's anything we could do at home to help her.
I'm getting a bit worried now as she has started showing signs of angsiety ie grinding her teeth, and mooving her mouth far too much when she speeks as she is trying soo desperatly to get the right sounds out.
I just want the SALT to work more closely with the nursery as they want to do all they can and will even provide a private room where Lucy's speech therapy can take place.
If anyone has any ideas or advice then please let me know. Thanks

[mummyloveslucy]

Anyone ?

[bramblebooks]

SALT should be assessing her progress at various stages throughout the programme.

YOu need to talk to the SALT about the programme, how much 'over learning' / repeated practice your daughter needs.

If you have further concerns, raise them with SALT - maybe they don't realise that you would like a bit more homework? It may also be worth taking it up with the nursery senco to ask for strategies to help with the anxiety.

[MummyDoIt]

Once a week is extremely good. My DS1 has a severe phonological disorder and had 12 half hour sessions in a whole year. Six of those were in a group where he was completely overshadowed by more confident/outspoken children. We had no choice but to go private.

Ask your SALT to use one of the sessions to go in to nursery and give the staff their advice. Ours did this and it was very valuable. We also liaise with nursery and now school to tell them exactly what we're working on so they can support us. For example, there's no point in the school trying to get DS1 to say the j sound correctly as it's beyond him at the moment but he can manage sh so we're working on getting him to make that sound correctly all the time.

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

TBH I think more than once a week might be too much for both you and your DD, purely for practical reasons.

My DS is 8.5 and has just started private speech therapy (as the LEA SLT thinks he's doing great and no further work with her needed). We often find he only cursorily goes though his "homework" the morning before SLT. There's just too much going on and we forget about it. OTOH it sounds like it's a much more pressing issue for your DD and you may be more motivated to use the exercises set by the SLT on a regular, daily basis. We pay £85 privately and the SLT comes at home. We definitely couldn't afford more sessions.

[mummyloveslucy]

It's really bad that children aren't getting the help they need. On the other hand there's children of 18 months having speech therapy Lucy wasn't saying anything at that age, just some jumbled noises but I really didn't expect anything more.

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

Depends what kind of speech therapy they're having. DD2 is 8 months old and is on the waiting list for SLT. She'll be starting asap after having her cochlear implant. I wouldn't do it for improving pronunciation at that age but maybe they need it for making sounds at all.

[mummyloveslucy]

Oh that would make sence. The children I know of at 18 months are having speech therapy because there parents are concerned they are not talking enough.

[coppertop]

I don't think you'll get more than once a week tbh. I thought we were lucky getting one session a month.

It sounds as though you need a meeting with the SALT and nursery staff together. The SALT should be able to draw up a plan of action with the staff and give them more guidance on what they should actually be doing. The SALT might also be able to provide you with materials to work on at home.

The system we had was that the SALT would visit the pre-school and explain what help each ds needed. She also provided them with materials, eg sheets, cards, pictures etc. I took ds to see her each month where she would assess progress and then give me things to work on with him before the next appointment.

Do you have contact with an Area SENCO who could help you with liaising between the various people?

[Hassled]

My DS3 has verbal dyspraxia (he's now 6) and started SALT at 3. Once a week is pretty good and you won't get more than that. My only real suggestion is that you get the ball rolling for a Statement of SEN, which your DD wil almost certainly need for school. If it comes through while she's still at nursery (in theory they take 6 months, in reality often more), then there will be a more formal interaction between the SALT dept and the nursery, and you will have a piece of paper with your DD's needs on it.

My DS3 is almost completely intelligible at (just) 6 - still has some issues but with a Statement giving him 20 hours a week of 1 to 1 support at school he's progressed more than we thought possible.

[mummyloveslucy]

That's brilliant, I'm really pleased for your son. It's a nightmare that progress is so slow. The more time goes on the amount of language she is using is increasing all the time but the speech sounds are not improving so the gap is getting bigger.
She remembers songs word for word after just hearing them a few times, but it's not at all clear.
I hope this dosn't affect her learning or her confidence. I've bought some jolly phonics books to help with the sounds.

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

"I hope this dosn't affect her learning or her confidence." Hopefully, it won't. Depends on her personality too. My DS's speech clarity & quantity was quite limited at that age but he always had tons of confidence. DD1 OTOH has beautiful, perfect speech (& hearing) but is quite negative and pessimistic/paranoid that people don't like her

[MetalMummy]

My DS is 4 and has verbal dyspraxia (and motor dyspraxia). He has SALT once a week and because his nursery is attached to the school he has already been put on school action plus even though he doesn't start reception until September. SALT has been in touch with SENCO and he has 4 sessions a week with the SENCO assistant in school. He also has group speech therapy in the nursery too (the nursery started this before he was diagnosed because they knew he had a problem with his speech). After reading about other peoples experiences I realise that we are very lucky with both the amount of SALT he now gets and that he goes to a school which is so good with the pupils with speech problems, but it took 2yrs of fighting for SALT before he got it!
We are not so lucky with the Occupational Therapy he is on the waiting list for for his Dyspraxia, at first we were told the waiting list was only 12weeks but now the school nurse has told me it's more like a year. The senco assistant has put some OT in place in school for him but it is very limited until he has been properly assessed.
I hope you get something sorted with the nursery, is there no one at the nursery who can do the speech therapy with her?

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

Riven, I find lots of good info on this site. Maybe you find something good on there too?

[TotalChaos]

mummyloveslucy - something else you might want to consider is that an organisation called ICAN have specialist speech/language nurseries. (www.ican.org.uk). they might have one of these in your city.