The speech and language therapy team in special schools supports parents and teachers to develop the children’s communication skills. We promote effective communication by whatever means, for example speech, signing (Signalong), symbol exchange or electronic communication aids. For further information on communication aids go to Electronic Communication Aids, signing and symbols.
If your child is a pupil at one of the schools you are invited to contact the team in school or we can arrange home visits. As with all other areas of the speech and language therapy service parental consent is required before we will work with your child.
In special schools, children’s communication needs may be addressed in different ways, such as direct therapy, group therapy, a class or home programme or targets set within their IEP (Individual Education Plan)
Some members of the speech and language therapy team are additionally trained to address feeding difficulties. Further information can be found atFeeding and Swallowing difficulties.
The therapist who leads this team is Amanda Pryde-Jarman. PLease contact 0161 206 1780 to discuss any questions about Special Schools with Amanda or a member of the team.
Our Early years team are currently working together with the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, this includes a rollout of language screening of children using the Wellcomm tool.
School Age Initiatives
We currently offer a range of virtual training sessions to schools for free! SENCo's will have been informed of training dates that you can book your staff on to. Please contact Fiona Taylor (fiona.taylor@nca.nhs.uk) or your Link SLT if you have any questions about this.
Enhanced Services initiatives
The Enhanced Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) Service offer bought-in input in schools. This might involve universal input, individual or group interventions. The Enhanced Team also support schools and staff to develop communication friendly environments and deliver training. For further information, please contact Fiona Taylor – fiona.taylor@nca.nhs.uk
I would also like to say that I am very impressed with the work Speech and Language Therapist is doing in school as well as the professional way she deals with my parents and her helpful advise to my staff. I believe credit where credit is due.
School staff
Lorna is amazing to work with and has made such an impact on our school provision, we are lucky to have her!
School SENCo
My child absolutely LOVES coming to see you, you are so good with him. We are extremely grateful for all of your care and support. He is counting down the days until we can come again.
Parent
We loved our sessions with Lucie, we found her to be positive and encouraging, we have already seen a huge improvement in his communication, using words and attempting new words to communicate with us in everyday tasks and his confidence in learning new words has shot up, he’s attempting 2 word phrases pretty well and even attempted 3 words on a couple of occasions. The difference for us is huge and we feel Lucie has set us up to keep improving now that the sessions are over.
Parent
I just wanted to send a quick email to say thank you for the training you delivered for us this afternoon, it was so useful and informative. It was great to have further training that was bespoke to Early Years and built on what we had done in the whole school training. We're excited to start implementing it for our children.
Early Years Teacher
I have just attended the virtual open evening and I thought it was a really nice way to explain the role and introduce the team as opposed to reading it on a job ad. I felt very lucky to have seen many of the benefits Fiona spoke about too so thank you for providing me with the opportunity to sit in on the training sessions.
Speech and Language Therapy Student
I am new to the role and I have found all members of the team extremely helpful and have gone out of their way to support me.
School SENCo
This is great and I am so appreciative of your support. We have nothing but fantastic things to say about the Salford SALT team and the support that you have given to both of our children.
