Parents of children who depend on speech and language therapy in Aberdeenshire schools have been left in the dark over how exactly massive council cuts will impact the crucial service.
The council voted to pull its funding of the service in the region’s schools at last month’s budget meeting.
Mums and dads of youngsters who currently rely on the service as it’s currently delivered in schools have come to understand that this means their kids will no longer receive the “vital” in-school support.
Almost 5,000 people have now signed a petition asking the local authority to reverse its decision.
When The P&J pressed council leader Gillian Owen directly on whether or not speech and language therapists would be removed from schools, she was unable to answer.
So we have contacted as many relevant organisations as possible in order to try and find some answers for worried parents.
Neither council nor NHS Grampian can say whether speech and language therapists will be removed from Aberdeenshire schools
“I have asked NHS Grampian and education members to get together to come and tell us exactly what the situation is,” Ms Owen told us.
“We don’t run the service, NHS Grampian run the service.
“It’s a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that was decided on at the budget meeting.
“Our saving is changing the support we provided to deliver the service.
“What NHS Grampian do moving forward, they need to design and deliver these services based on combined NHS and council funding.
“We were funding an element, but our element wasn’t the actual speech and language therapists, ours was enhancement of what was actually in place.”
When asked what exactly the £200,000 the council voted to cut was being spent on, if not in-school speech and language therapists, Ms Owen couldn’t provide an answer.
Ms Owen also denied the council was sitting on an extra £3million ready to be spent, after deputy First Minister Shona Robison emailed local authorities the night before Aberdeenshire Council’s budget meeting to tell them about some extra money.
Despite Ms Owen directing us to NHS Grampian for answers, NHS Grampian said it was an issue for the Aberdeenshire Health and Social Care Partnership (AHSCP), which is a partnership organisation between the council and NHS Grampian.
Here’s what the AHSCP had to say…
‘There will be fewer speech and language therapists’
An AHSCP spokeswoman told us there will be fewer speech and language therapists.
But she could not confirm to us whether or not they would be removed from school settings.
“The money the SLA provided was used to fund speech and language therapists who worked across schools and the community,” she said.
“The decrease in funding means there will be fewer speech and language therapists working across Aberdeenshire.
“We will work, along with education colleagues, to redesign the service to mitigate some of the impact.
“The full scope of what the service will provide in future has not yet been worked through with our teams on the ground. However, our priority and indeed duty, will be to support children with communication needs.”
Aberdeenshire set to lose ‘approximately nine speech and language therapists’
Glenn Carter is head of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in Scotland. He was denied the chance to address the chamber during last month’s budget meeting despite his best attempts.
The P&J asked Mr Carter what his interpretation of the cut means in practice.
He said the funding being lost equates to approximately nine speech and language therapists.
He added: “This funding cut will significantly reduce the service’s ability to deliver speech and language therapy support in schools.
“The central question is: What do children with communication needs require to support their learning, wellbeing, and future life chances?
“The answer is having an education environment adapted to their needs, with speech and language therapy embedded in schools.”
Readers can view the full transcript of our interview with Gillian Owen here.
Conversation