Last week The Guardian held a Q&A session with Children’s Minister Sarah Teather to address a number of concerns from Guardian readers around current Special Educational Needs (SEN) provision. You can read the article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/may/23/sarah-teather-readers-qanda
Interestingly, the first paragraph of the article talks about Ms Teather’s attitude to the cause, stating that:
“Sarah Teather, the children’s minister, comes across as genuinely passionate about helping children with special needs. So much so that at one point in the interview, she got quite cross. ‘The health service is failing some of our most vulnerable children’, she said. The chance of a child receiving speech and language therapy is “between low and nil”, while the wait for a wheelchair can be ‘really long’, she said.”

Ms Teather highlights an issue that is prevalent amidst today’s economic crisis and the subsequent NHS cuts to speech and language therapy services. She goes on to say that health professionals often agree with parents and recommend a particualr type or period of therapy, but that “nobody pays for it” and it fails to arrive.
By this time, 6 months or even 18 months down the line, the vital window of opportunity that can maximise a child’s chances of success at therapy can be entirely missed, often worsening the problem. For example, current research suggests that children will benefit most from speech and language therapy input before the age of 5. After this, they attend school and face considerably more difficulties in an enviroment that is much more communicatively demanding. If a child is referred for therapy aged 4, and does not receive it until past the age of 5, once in-school, the opportunity to have the most success with therapy will be gone. Ms Teather warns that this could severely impair a child’s chances in the future, and that parents faced a “postcode lottery” to get basic therapy or equipment.
If you feel that your child may benefit from speech and language therapy, Integrated Treatment Services could be of help. Contact us here: https://integratedtreatmentservices.co.uk/contact-us/enquiry/
Sarah Bennington June 2011
Written on behalf of Integrated Treatment Services. ITS is a private Speech and Language Therapy service based in Leicestershire and the East Midlands. It specialises in providing highly-skilled Speech and Language Therapists, but also associates with other therapeutic professionals, including Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists, Psychologists and Arts Therapists.


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