Speech therapy
 

My son currently has speech therapy, how do I go about getting him more when we are living in Canada? I don't want him to miss out on vital help that he needs.
Anyone who's been throu this or has any advice would be great thank you!

Re: Speech therapy
 

How old is your son?

You can go to one of the Public Health Centres and speak to a Public Health Nurse who will tell you how to get a referal to the Speech and Language Team

Have posted the links for Alberta Health Services

http://www.albertahealthservices.ca/...ce&rid=1003329

http://www.albertahealthservices.ca/...rvice&rid=5829

Hope that helps

Re: Speech therapy
 

Hi
I am a UK speech and language therapist now working for a private company in BC. The company deals with children who mainly have autism. The Health authority passes all future care to the decision made by parents as to who should provide care once the diagnosis is made.
All pre 5 kids (regardless of speech and language/communication difficulty) here access the public health units. Once they reach Kinderagrten age then care is taken over by school therapists. So depending on your child's age you can approach the appropriate department.
From what I hear I believe the work in schools is more consultative and children have access to a certain number of visits per year. From my own perspective I find it frustrating as all things are based on funding. This means my under 6 years kids get me two hours a months and over 6s once every three months. As I said this is for children with autism here in BC. This is in stark contrast to my work in the NHS where I had control over when and how much I felt a child required.
Many parents here have to access private therapists because of the shortfall in what their children can access. Many health plans have a small amount of funding for SLPs (speech language pathologists as we are known here).
Hope you get what you want! Please feel free to PM me if I can assist further.
Elaine

Re: Speech therapy
 

My son was 3 just when we moved to Canada. He had already been assessed in the UK as having delayed speech but was of an age where they didn't want to undertake speech therapy but rather just monitor it. He was assessed again at pre-school here in Canada and was then referred to our local Speech and Language Centre where he had an hour's session of speech therapy once a week.

He was assessed again when he started Kindergarten. There was one aspect in particular with his speech that he was assessed very low which meant he qualified for the extra funding. This resulted in an additional full-time classroom assistant (along with the teacher and regular classroom assistant) to help my son and another student with their speech issues.

Moving onto Grades 1 and 2 his speech improved greatly but he continued to have sessions with a Speech Pathologist once a week whilst at school along with some extra assistance inbetween with another teacher.

He is due to go into Grade 3 in September and I had a call just this past week to say they are happy to sign him off now as his speech is such that he longer needs the assistance. :thumbsup: