Improving the Shropshire Speech & Language Therapy Service for Children & Young People
22/09/2020
The quality of Shropshire Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) Service was highlighted as a concern in the Shropshire SEND Inspection letter. While the significant area of weakness identified was the excessive waiting times, other comments in the report also raised concerns about the service specification and the fact that the service was not meeting the needs of children and young people with SEND in Shropshire.
Area of significant Weakness identified:
- Significant waiting times for those needing assessment and treatment from the speech and language therapy service
Detailed comments from Inspection letter:
“Children and young people experience significant waits for speech and language assessment and treatment. The current speech and language therapy (SALT) service specification is not fit for purpose. Consequently, the SALT service is not meeting the needs of children and young people with SEND in the area.”
“Children and young people with SEND wait too long to have their needs assessed and met by SALT services. There are a significant number of children and young people who have waited over 18 weeks for assessment. Leaders have put in place a recovery plan to address this, but any sustained effect of these actions is yet to be seen.”
As part of the work on the Shropshire Written Statement of Action steps have already been taken by the service to reduce waiting times in line with national expectations. The Service now wants to speak to parent carers who have experience SALT interventions, to talk with them about how the service can be improved. The Service has arranged a virtual workshop on the 30th September 1pm – 2.30pm so that parent carers can share with them their thoughts on what parts of the current service works well and what parts should change and how. If you want to join this meeting please contact PACC for further details. It is important that the services hears from parent carers with a wide range of experience, including those in mainstream settings who have accessed support, as well as those with more specialist SALT needs.
This is the first engagement opportunity around this work and PACC hopes that there will be more opportunities in the future that provide greater flexibility in supporting parent carers to participate in these discussions. If you have feedback about the service but can’t attend the planned meeting, we still want to hear from you, and we will feed your comments into the discussions. You can email your comments to enquiries@paccshropshire.org.uk or message us on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ShropsPACC
Thank you for helping to improve services for the Shropshire SEND community.
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