Leanne is a delight to work with, full of enthusiasm and energy.  She is extremely hardworking and organised.  I always feel that one of the best decisions made was to employ Leanne.

This year, Leanne has continued to work directly with children with significant language and communication needs in partnership with the teachers and teaching assistants.  A number of assessments and reports were completed and these have been useful in seeking EHC Plans and in setting targets for children.

Staff reported how useful they found the ‘Word Aware’ training; this was good professional development.  The Year 6 teacher reported that the impact of Leanne’s work had transferred across to a child’s writing.  We have now begun to plan for next year – caseload and ‘Word Aware’ as a whole school initiative.

I contacted Leanne as we had concerns about our 2.5yo speech development. We had already ruled out any hearing issues through various tests, so needed some advice on why our daughter was having difficulty forming coherent basic sentences. Leanne visited us to assess our daughter and diagnosed her with a moderate language delay. Over the following month, we met Leanne weekly and she helped us understand how we could support our daughter and develop her speech. I’m delighted to see such an improvement, using the techniques and tools Leanne showed us. Our daughter is enjoying expanding her speech and I am so happy to see her less frustrated as she can now express herself more easily. We plan to follow up with further check in sessions over the coming months, so that we can continue to monitor and support her speech if still required. Leanne has a wonderful approach and immediately put us and our daughter at ease. The sessions were fun for our daughter and informative for us. She’s helped us enormously and I would thoroughly recommend Leanne.

Leanne was able to build a rapport with a child with significant Emotional Behavioural Difficulties quickly and efficiently. She took the time to find out his specific and preferred interests in order to help him access SLT assessment and activities, which he did so successfully.

Leanne has worked with both our children, age 8 and 5. She has provided us with therapy for their lisps. She has helped us understand how best to help them and how they can help themselves. She has a natural gift with children and it’s always a pleasure to see her. It is great having the therapy in our home, so that she works within their environment and with the whole family’. Annie and Luke, Parents Hackney

We contacted Leanne when our son Jack turned two years old.  He had a limited and indistinct vocabulary and had not added any new words in the previous three months, possibly due to undiagnosed glue ear.   We suspected nothing serious was wrong, but we knew he was speech-delayed and didn’t want to be complacent. Leanne visited us at home to make an assessment.  She has a lovely way with toddlers – and with parents, I might add!  She took our concerns seriously but also sought to reassure us.  After observing Jack, Leanne gave us simple but highly effective advice for helping him.  She explained the basics of speech development to us, and how our previous efforts may have been backfiring.  I personally found this reasoned and simple approach very useful.  We were left with a clear strategy for helping Jack that we could quickly and easily explain to the other adults in his life. We know speech development takes time, but Jack’s progress since Leanne’s visit has been delightful for us.   Leanne did not try to push more sessions on us, but we ourselves chose to follow up six months later for an update.  We consider both sessions to be money well spent. Best wishes, Amber

After our first assessment she confirmed what I thought that he has serious speech delay/concentration issues. Her patience and knowledge how to handle Olly’s behaviour problems amazed me from day one. We went through a lot of different therapies. First she taught parent child interaction, in the beginning it would be vital that we use this therapy. She even told us Olly needs some weeks of break to put together all the information in his brain, and I had to carry on the PCI, which is not really easy, but with the help of Leanne we managed to do it and Olly started to develop. The next stage was the colourful semantics and Makaton, and Olly started to make his first sentences.

We were super happy about his development. Later came the shape coding therapy what really helped with Olly’s grammar. By the time Olly started reception his vocabulary was within the normal range. Leanne helped Olly with phonics, as he was struggling (quite common in kids with speech delay) Olly enjoyed the sessions with Leanne, he really built up a special bond with her. We can’t be thankful enough for Leanne for all the help with Olly learning to speak and being part of this tough road. She just did a wonderful job with him, we will miss her a lot.

To whom it may concern

Leanne Williams worked for our trust for a year, from 1st September 2019, as an
independent Speech and Language Therapist, 2 days a week. During this time, she has
always been very professional and was always punctual, efficient and very organised .

Her role mainly involved screening pupils in the Early Years, to identify possible
language delays: creating a program of intervention for these pupils: training and
monitoring staff t o deliver these sessions: supporting the language development of
pupils with ASD; and direct therapy work with pupils with some pupils.

Leanne worked well as part of the SEN team, including the SENCo, SEN teacher, class
teachers, teaching assistants and external agencies. She provided fantastic t raining
for our staff, on her own and in collaboration with our Autism support agency.

Leanne has a lovely manner with the children and they always felt comfortable working
and chatting with her. She also has a fantastic relationship with the parents that was
both supportive, sensitive and direct enough to give and get the information that was
needed.

Leanne’s reports were incredibly thorough and useful. We relied heavily on them when
informing provision, setting targets and to support further referrals and funding /
EHCP applications. Her record keeping was impeccable and she kept us informed of all
the input she was providing and the progress of pupils. She always strictly adhered to
GDPR.

During the Covidl9 lockdown, Leanne’s input was crucial to provide support to parents
and pupils on her caseload while they were home-schooled . The parents were very
appreciative of her support. She was able to contact them weekly, discuss any
concerns, give suggestions and resources and even did some video call sessions with
pupils.

We are very sad to see her go and wish her all the best for the future!

Celeste Richardson – SENCo at Britannia Education Trust