Speech therapy sporadic in pandemic, says Black Country mum

Zachary's parents, Liam Cole and Jenny Lester, encourage him to respond to questions

A mother whose five-year-old son has delayed speech says his progress has been hit by "very sporadic" therapy and has called for better support.

Jenny Lester, of Halesowen, said son Zachary had had few one-to-one NHS sessions and no contact "at all" for seven months since lockdown hit.

"We want him to be everything he possibly can be and communication is central to so much in life," she said.

The trust said its team worked together "to give the best possible treatment".

The children's commissioner said last year children in England faced a "postcode lottery" in speech and language therapy funding. Spending per child in the West Midlands was among the lowest.

Ms Lester said her family had been paying for private speech therapy for a year.

"Obviously Zachary is a big part of all of our lives and we all want him to be able to communicate and not to be frustrated," she said.

Ms Lester wants therapists to know the subjects which interest Zachary

Zachary has recently begun putting two and three-word sentences together but mainly responded to closed questions such as "say yes or no" and had a significant speech delay, she said.

"It probably affects his confidence I think, playing with other children, because he can't speak very well. A lot of the time children speak to him and he can't speak back and that's difficult to see as well.

"And it is very frustrating to think that if he actually had the support that he needs and he deserves then he could be further along by now, and he could be talking to other children his age and he could be talking to his family."

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As a toddler in 2017, Zachary was referred for NHS speech therapy help.

But apart from an initial block of four sessions, care had been "very patchy", his mother said.

She wants a familiar person to deliver regular sessions, so they come to know a child's interests.

"At the moment I don't feel like anybody in that service would know my son," she said.

Ms Lester is to meet MP Marco Longhi, the Conservative MP for Dudley North, to call for better support

Black Country Healthcare said it aimed to assess children within eight weeks to develop an individual support plan with schools, but this depended on factors such as staffing levels and referral rate.

Scott Humphries, its director of children, young people and families services, said it aimed for blocks of therapy to be carried out by the same clinician, but assessments and reviews were frequently done by different therapists.

"The therapy team work very closely together and share details of each patient to ensure that they always receive the best possible treatment," he said.

"During the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been difficult to carry out face-to-face therapy. However, our team has been working hard to maintain contact with all patients through phone and video calls," he said.

He said the therapists were now back in schools and the trust would be contacting Ms Lester "to work with her to identify any areas where she feels improvements could be made".

Earlier this month, Mike Wood, Conservative MP for Dudley South, called for a debate on "regional disparities" in funding and support for speech and language therapy, particularly during the pandemic.

The Department of Health and Social Care said the NHS would be given an extra £33.9bn a year by 2023/24 and it was up to clinical commissioning groups to decide how best to use their budgets.