"Our journey with speech therapy"

We had concerns over our son’s development from a young age but we’re finding it difficult to get support for him. 

We had a chat and play with Speech Therapy, we were unsure of what this would look like as our son is non verbal. We were instantly put at ease and found the process insightful - he was referred for assessment at Armistead and put on the wait list for speech therapy. We were allocated Rebecca as our speech therapist but switched to Ailsa due to the clinic days fitting around work for us. We had an initial few sessions in clinic where we were given lots of helpful strategies to try to get our son to engage in play with us and to try and encourage communication. We were put forward for the Hanen beyond words course, we completed this course with Ailsa and Rebecca - they were brilliant, full of knowledge and enthusiasm at every session. They offered practical ideas and support along with tried and tested strategies to help him progress with his communication and build our confidence in encouraging him to develop on his skills at his pace. We met and formed friendships with other parents in similar situations whilst completing Hanen, this has proved to be a fantastic support network for us. 

During the Hanen course we were encouraged to really think about how he communicates and why. We were supported to look for any and all types of communication from our son throughout the course and beyond. When we started with SALT he didn’t bother to communicate with us and seemed to live in his own bubble, he wouldn’t ask for his needs to be met and didn’t appear to want interaction from us very often. This was difficult for us as a family, especially for his sister who was trying to engage with him regularly and becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of interest from him. During the course he started to interact with us more and towards the end of the course he began to seek out interactions with us, his more extended family and his key person at nursery. He began to request things he needed and wanted by hand leading us and pushing away things to ‘say’ no. He started to kiss and cuddle us more to tell us he was happy and we’d got what he wanted right. He would bring toys to us to play and request songs by the repetitive actions we used. He began to understand and enjoy interactions using the routine we created. He began to verbalise sounds and has a few consistent sounds that we understand as words now. The whole process with speech and language has reduced the frustration and meltdowns in our house. It’s made our son more confident interacting with a variety of people, helped us bond more as a family and has made it possible for us to get out more and even go on a little holiday together. 

Ailsa and Rebecca didn’t just support us with the speech therapy, they helped us to get a new health visitor and arrange a team around the child meeting for our son to get further support in place. They have helped us to get him a blue parking badge, child disability payment and to take him to panel to be offered a place at nursery. Their knowledge and expertise helped us to access a world of support for him that seemed out of reach to us previously. They listened and supported us without judgement (this was a new experience for us). 

We worked with SALT for around a year including the Hanen course and our lives have changed so much in this time. We have a much more positive outlook on what our son will be able to achieve now the right support is in place. Rebecca and Ailsa were there to help us when we, as parents needed it, as well as when our son needed it. I don’t think I can express enough how much of an impact this support has had on my family. We thank you for everything you have done so far, you have been amazing! We are sure we will be seeing you again in the future for more help and support.