Scores of worried parents whose children rely on in-school speech and language therapists have contacted me in recent weeks.
Aberdeenshire Council voted to pull its funding of the speech and language service at last month’s budget meeting.
However, confusion reigns over whether or not this will in fact be the case.
I sat down with council leader Gillian Owen to try and get some clarity for these parents. Particularly on whether speech and language therapists will be removed from Aberdeenshire schools.
I put questions to the council leader which were provided to me by some of the parents I’ve been speaking to in recent weeks, whose children are going to be impacted by these cuts.
Did I get this clarity? I’ll leave it for readers to decide….
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Gillian Owen: “Speech and language therapy is not stopping.
“There seems to be people saying it’s stopping. It’s not.
“The important thing here is that any child that needs speech and language therapy will still be able to access it, which is actually the key point.
“The core service is provided by the NHS, and while it will be delivered differently, the principles of speech and language therapy for those who need it aren’t being taken away.
“Our saving is changing the support we provide to deliver the service. We recognise that NHS Grampian and the Aberdeenshire Health and Social Care Partnership designed the way they deliver these services based on combined NHS and council funding.
“We have committed to ensuring we work together with the NHS to ensure that children’s speech, language and communication needs are going to be met.
“I’m still waiting for a bit more feedback. I know that teams from education and teams from NHS Grampian are having meetings. I don’t yet know what the outcomes of these meetings are so I can’t share anything with you.”
What’s your understanding of the implications for parents and children, logistically, in getting to and from appointments during work and school time, if speech and language therapists are no longer available in schools?
GO: “I can’t give you an answer to that because I haven’t had the feedback I’m waiting for from the education service and NHS Grampian. I asked for a meeting to take place between NHS Grampian and education services to establish what the actual deal is going to be, and I’m waiting for them to come back.”
There has been concern over the impact this will have on behavioural issues, which often go hand-in-hand with speech issues. How will teachers be able to provide sufficient speech and language support to these kids? There’s concern that they’ll have to pick up the slack, as well as parents.
GO: “My understanding was that the SLA [Service Level Agreement] that was in place was enhancement to the service the NHS ran. So I don’t have a complete answer to what you’re asking.
“Whether in schools or not, the service is for the NHS to configure. They employ the speech and language therapists, we don’t. We will work with them to design the appropriate model.
“The SLA does not, and did not, provide universal direct therapeutic services to children. The SLA in place was to ensure that there was a seamless delivery of all aspects of paediatric speech and therapy.”
But having speech and language therapists in schools meant that there was early intervention and assessment of kids that had issues with speech and language. Now that these therapists are no longer going to be in schools, that’s no longer going to be the case.
GO: “How do you know they’re not going to be in schools? It’s the SLA that’s being removed. NHS Grampian provide the service, not Aberdeenshire Council.”
A lot of people are confused about this. It was at an Aberdeenshire Council budget meeting that this was discussed and decided upon. Parents’ understanding is that the speech and language therapists they have in their kids’ schools every single week will no longer be there. That is their understanding.
GO: “I don’t know what model the NHS is going to put in place.”
Well, it could be the case that all these parents are wrong, but that is their understanding of the situation. Every single one I’ve spoken to. Their understanding is that there will no longer be speech and language therapists in schools. So if that’s not the case, then there’s an issue with communication there.
GO: “That’s exactly what I’m saying to you. I have asked NHS Grampian and education members to get together to come and tell us exactly what the situation is.
“We don’t run the service, NHS Grampian run the service.
“It’s a Service Level Agreement 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.”
It’s a £200,000 spend that’s been cut. Presumably that was a £200,000 spend on something. The assumption from parents was that that was spent on having these speech and language therapists in schools on a weekly basis.
GO: “Well, I can send you the SLA. It covered six main elements. It wasn’t speech and language therapists. They are very much NHS employees.”
There seems to be an issue with communication here.
GO: “Absolutely, and I’ve said that. There’s been a lot of scaremongering too.
“The letter that Glenn Carter from the Royal Society of Speech and Language Therapists wrote didn’t necessarily help that situation. Writing to 70 councillors saying this, this, and this, and it not being totally true, you know, when you’re talking in terms of an SLA, that is totally different to a service.”
But the understanding which I’ve given you, that’s my own understanding, it’s the parents’ understanding, and that was also his understanding.
GO: “Yes, so why didn’t he talk to Laurence Findlay, the director of education and children’s services, whose service that comes under, to establish what it actually was.”
One bugbear of parents was that communication wasn’t only unclear, but that they only found out the day before the budget meeting. That caused a lot of shock and anxiety.
GO: “Oh absolutely. But I was at great pains to say everything was on the table. Everybody in the administration had to look at everything that was on the table. And when you look at the complete budget, between the opposition and our budget, there’s very, very tiny changes to them.
“The whole point is that the service is not stopping because it’s not us that provides it. Our Service Level Agreement was enhancement, not actually running the service.”
It’s unclear what this £200,000 saving will mean on the ground. It seems to me you don’t know what that saving is going to mean in practice. Can you confirm whether or not this will entail the removal of speech and language therapists in schools?
GO: “We don’t run that service.”
But why was it discussed at a council budget meeting then?
GO: “The SLA ended last March. The SLA covered six main elements. My understanding was totally and utterly that it was enhancement for the service that was being provided.”
I’ve picked up some disconnect between the council and parents of ASN children and children who are reliant on the speech and language therapy service in school. It’s been described to me as a service of crucial importance and there’s a sense, rightly or wrongly, that councillors don’t understand what these speech and language therapists do. Is that unfair?
GO: “Well, probably not. I don’t understand 100% everything that goes on in the council.
“But at the same time, the understanding seems to be different. The understanding that I have is that it’s a service provided by NHS Grampian, and we have an SLA with them to enhance that.
“Yes, it does mean that the savings will change the support, but that’ll be in relation to the delivery of the service.
“There does seem to be a wee bit of disconnect in terms of people’s understanding of what this £200,000 means. That’s the issue.”
Whether or not this will entail the removal of speech and language therapists in schools, it’s a cut in funding to speech and language therapy, and that annoys a lot of parents. In fact, there was a similar cut made by Edinburgh City Council and they ended up reversing that cut, such was the outcry. Given that the council learned, just hours before the budget meeting, that they were sitting on this extra £3million pounds-
GO: “No, no, no, we’re not sitting on an extra £3million.
“There were all sorts of caveats put into that in terms of the Spring Budget. We don’t know whether we’re going to get that extra money or not. We don’t know whether it’s £1million, £2million, £3million, we don’t know whether we’re going to get it.
“From my point of view, I wanted it put into reserves so that at a future meeting we could determine where we spend that money.
“There are all sorts of challenges, including financial challenges coming along the track. Having discussed it with other senior councillors, I decided that the best place for it would be the reserve account, to make sure that some of the holes that may appear moving forward can be counteracted.
“But I must emphasise that it’s not a guaranteed £3million.”
Whatever it is, £3million, £2million, £1million, if you are given that extra money, might some of that be spent on-
GO: “That’s for the council to decide.”
But £200,000 is such a small amount, relatively speaking, for such a crucial service. If the council has money stored away for a rainy day, would the council consider reversing this cut?
GO: “I can’t answer that. Once we know how much money we’ve got, and once we put the options through to council, then it’ll be a council decision. I can’t make that sort of decision by myself.”
When might you know whether you are going to get some extra money?
GO: “I don’t know. I’ve seen some stuff from Shona Robison which didn’t look very positive. I honestly don’t know about that, but I’d like to think she’ll stick by her word and send it our way.
“But I don’t know. It’s obviously for her to decide and I’m sure COSLA will have a big input to that as well.”
Parents are looking for clarity. You sound unsure yourself as to what the impact of the saving is going to be, in terms of speech and language therapists in schools. Parents just want to know how it’s going to affect them and their children.
GO: “I totally get that. And that’s why I’ve asked for NHS Grampian to sit down with education services to establish what is the barrier that appears to have been created by us taking out the SLA.”
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