Speech therapy?

Does anyone have any experience setting up speech therapy in the UK? My bright preschooler is receiving speech therapy at preschool, and I'm worried that when we move over, he'll miss out on vital months because we haven't got anything lined up for him.

Will he have to be reevaluated in the UK, or could his records here qualify him for services? How do I even register in the first place? (We'd be living in Scotland, if that makes a difference.) Can I expect a waiting list for a speech therapist? (There was a huge one here.)

He's a UK citizen by birth (has passport to prove it now), and ideally I'd like to get him set ahead of time.

While we're on the subject, what about speech for school age kids??

You may be able to contact your local children's centre and find out about current wait times.  I'm not sure how proactive you'll be able to be but worth a try.  I will caution to expect things to take longer here than in the US.  You may benefit by going private instead of NHS.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think like most of these things, you would need to register with a GP once you move over and discuss these things.
However, you could perhaps start at this site
https://www.rcslt.org/speech_and_language_therapy/finding_an_SLT

You can also look for information at your particular Scottish health board
http://www.scot.nhs.uk//organisations/

Good luck!

You may be able to contact your local children's centre and find out about current wait times.  I'm not sure how proactive you'll be able to be but worth a try.  I will caution to expect things to take longer here than in the US.  You may benefit by going private instead of NHS.

If she went private, it would only be while on the waiting list for NHS services, right?  So the private costs would only be for continuity of care during the wait?

If she went private, it would only be while on the waiting list for NHS services, right?  So the private costs would only be for continuity of care during the wait?

Private would likely jump the queue for an initial assessment (if required) and then referred back to the NHS path.  Could save a big chunk of time.

Found this:
http://www.asl.scot.nhs.uk/Services/SpeechLanguage/ReferralToSpeechLanguageTherapy.pdf


Might be of help? It seems that anyone (including parents) can refer to speech therapy.

I'd expect there to be a very long wait for this on the NHS. As a secondary teacher, my experience is more with the diagnosis of learning difficulties, which again is slow and can be very frustrating (especially as, quite honestly, America in general is totally over health-cared if you can afford it and moves with (relative) lightning speed. For example, it can take weeks or months to start treatment for urgent conditions like cancer here).

It will likely be very dependent on the area in which you live.

We are in Liverpool and our wait was 18 months (in 2013, and to be honest cuts to Sure Start centres and speech therapy in general have been even worse since then.)

The assessment was fairly quickly via both his preschool (who initially referred him) and our local Sure Start, it was the therapy we waited ages for. Going private didn't matter to wait times; we actually hired a private speech therapist (at considerable expense) while we waited, she did an assessment but we will still put in normal queue for the therapy.

You can find help here: www.helpwithtalking.com

It's the association of speech and language therapists in independent practice, you can search by postcode to find someone local.  Definitely go to Sure start centre, they tend to have drop ins and can help you get referred.

Hope that helps.

It will likely be very dependent on the area in which you live.

We are in Liverpool and our wait was 18 months (in 2013, and to be honest cuts to Sure Start centres and speech therapy in general have been even worse since then.)

The assessment was fairly quickly via both his preschool (who initially referred him) and our local Sure Start, it was the therapy we waited ages for. Going private didn't matter to wait times; we actually hired a private speech therapist (at considerable expense) while we waited, she did an assessment but we will still put in normal queue for the therapy.

You can find help here: www.helpwithtalking.com

It's the association of speech and language therapists in independent practice, you can search by postcode to find someone local.  Definitely go to Sure start centre, they tend to have drop ins and can help you get referred.

Hope that helps.

I don't think we have sure start centres in Scotland.

Definitely register with a GP asap, and then it will be a process of referral from there.

There is a more relaxed culture toward child development here. I doubt you'll get much help if the healthcare workers can suss that your child will eventually catch up naturally on their own.

Obviously this depends on your child's needs.

Just a funny story about speech.

My hubby moved from the Newcastle area to the Highlands when he was 2 and his brother was just born.  His parents were born and bred Geordies.    When his brother went to Nursery school for the first time, they thought he needed speech therapy because he was saying everything in quite a Geordie manner.   This was a small place not quite exposed to the outside world in the early 80s, so you can *almost* see why....   His parents were raging!!!!

I don't even think this was an issue for my hubby, because he was barely speaking at all at nursery school age, apparently.  These days he'd be going to all kinds of early intervention programmes. Well at least in the US. 

In the Czech language, there's a letter that's incredibly difficult to pronounce,  r with a little hat on it.  Sort of a mix between r and z.  Many people, including Vaclav Havel can't pronounce it well.  Many kids end up in speech therapy only because of this one letter. It's an essential part of the Czech word for three, and since nobody can understand me when I say it, I always had to get 2 or 4 of anything.  Never 3.

Thanks everyone. I wish it had something to do with accents because that would actually be adorable, but he really is far behind his peers in expressive communication (pretty sure even by UK standards). He is finally all set up with the services he needs here in the US, which took over half a year.

It's frustrating to know that he'd be put on long waiting lists all over again over there, even if we go private, but I kind of figured that would be the case. I don't really want him to lose out on any more time catching up before he starts primary school in two years, but I guess we'll have no choice.

I'm guessing you can't register with a GP or speak to someone about services if you don't have a UK residence yet? (I doubt the fact he's a UK citizen makes a difference.)

Sorry morecoffee, I didn't mean to make light of your situation and the gravity of being set far back again is probably really worrying. 
 I wonder if you start the ball rolling with a private therapist now- if you know where you moving to, you can start looking and inquiring now at least?

I was also going to say, bring along any initial and final reports from the speech and language therapist, along with any activities that you might have been doing for him at home.  Although my son had to wait a long time for actual therapy, we used activities and strategies from our private therapy and our preschool and his reception class worked with him nearly every day with those resources. It was definitely a team effort, and he made loads of progress.

Was chatting to my friend at lunchtime and her 7 year old daughter has been getting speech therapy in school since she was 3.  But she's exasperated because it seems like she's only getting 10 minutes every 12 weeks or so and hasn't been making any progress. So she's been in contact with a private therapist and has an appointment straight away (no waiting time).  This is in the Highlands, so there was only one about and there is a fair bit of travel involved, but if you're in the central belt, you can probably find a lot more. 

Also, my friend wrote a book on colourful semantics and although she just moved to Canada, she has worked across the UK, so if you want, PM me and I can contact her for advice. (Only if you're comfortable, of course)