Coronavirus (COVID-19) – information for children, young people and families - 27th March 2020
We understand that you might be worried about coronavirus – also known as COVID-19 – particularly if your child has a long-term health condition.
This information sheet from Birmingham Community Health Care Foundation Trust (BCHC) sets out our advice and the action we are taking to respond to the coronavirus outbreak.
Covid-19 Information Leaflet
We provide evidence based specialist support to children (0-19) with a range of specific speech, language and communication difficulties and those with difficulties swallowing, eating and drinking.
The Children’s Speech and Language Therapy Service is currently experiencing high demand, which means there are long waiting times for appointments. We recognise that this information may be concerning and want you to know we are working actively with Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group (Health Commissioners of the service) and the Local Authority on long-term solutions so that children can access support in a more reasonable timescale.
At present, there are waits of several months for an initial assessment. We plan to reduce this wait to 25-26 weeks by the end of March 2020 for most children. (Those with needs that pose the greatest risk to their health, such as eating and drinking difficulties, are already seen much sooner).
For children who meet the threshold for treatment, there is a second wait for treatment to start. We are tackling waits at this point in the pathway by targeting two groups of children first, where we believe their needs most require the specific skills of a Speech and Language Therapist. These children have difficulties with speech sounds or stammering. We aim to reduce the wait from referral to start of treatment for those children to 30 weeks by the end of March 2020 - the service is on track to reach this target.
We have been working hard to prevent waiting times for other children, who mostly have difficulties developing language, from growing any longer and have, in fact, reduced average waits. The longest wait at the end of January for this group of children is 120 weeks from referral to start of treatment; however, average waits are 90 weeks.
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