Solicitors
SLT for Kids understand what it takes to work with solicitors. We offer a bespoke, professional, timely and cost effective service to our clients. Our experience and knowledge allows us to ensure both solicitors and their clients have a positive experience with us.
SLT for Kids work with many solicitors in providing expert advice, written quotations and are clear and open about costs through effective communication throughout our time together. We have the ability to be flexible in adjusting our service to meet your needs and in providing high quality management of each client from assessment through to therapy.
Solicitors may require services from our speech and language therapists in order to establish the extent of the child’s needs in terms of amount of therapy required and the cost of therapy.
Services we offer to solicitors
Our speech and language therapists are able to provide solicitors with a professional opinion, through assessments and reports, on a child's needs and the amount and cost of therapy they may require to improve. They can also provide solicitors with a professional opinion on how they may progress through therapy dependent on the intervention required. All of work is in accordance to Ministry of Justice’s practice 35 and the 2015 rehabilitation code.
Medico-legal reports
Our speech and language therapists at SLT for Kids are able to provide expert opinions on all matters related to speech, language, communication, voice and swallowing needs in the form of medico-legal reports. We are able to offer different types of medico-legal reports when instructed to do so based on the needs of the solicitor and their client.
Assessment of quantum
A detailed assessment will assess the child’s needs and a report will be written outlining how much therapy will cost in order to meet the needs of the child in context of their goals.
Medical negligence
When speech, language, communication and swallowing is affected due to medical negligence our speech and language therapists are able to provide a report outlining what exactly is affected due to the negligence.
Professional competence
Your speech and language therapists are able to provide a report to confirm the appropriacy of the therapy activities another speech and language therapist has used. We can provide an expert second opinion on whether or not a particular therapy programme that has been used on a child was appropriate or not.
Criminal cases
We can provide a medico-legal report to identify whether a juvenile offender is able to understand their rights or relevant documents needed for them to make an informed decision. We are able to assess their language level of understanding and expression and suggest ways in which we can support this.
Tribunal
Our speech and language therapists are able to provide an expert opinion or appear as a professional representative at a client's tribunal. We will be able to assess the child’s needs in terms of their case in order to provide evidence for a tribunal. We will write detailed reports of our findings from assessment and can provide verbal representatives at court proceedings. The most common tribunals we are instructed to represent include school allocations and adoption cases.
Expert witness services
Solicitors may instruct a speech and language therapist to be an expert witness, usually after medico-legal report writing. Our speech and language therapists are able to provide an expert witness service and will attend court to advise the jury on our expert opinions. We will be able to provide evidence from our assessment process as well as a verbal and written report of our findings to provide as expert witness.
Assessment of capacity
We are able to assess a child or young person’s ability to understand and retain information as well as make a fully informed decision based on all of this information. We are also able to assess a child or young person’s ability to not only understand all information but their ability to express their decisions and express their understandings. Capacity will differ for people depending on the context they are in, our speech and language therapists are able to provide a detailed assessment and report of a child or young person’s capacity based on different contexts.
Based on the capacity of the young people our speech and language therapists are also able to provide a service where we will devise strategies and provide support for children and young people so that they are able to understand and express their decisions as best as possible. We can therefore, allow children and young people the access to capacity rather than decisions being made by others in their best interest.
