Terms & Conditions

Services Offered

Initial Assessment with report

This session will last around 60 minutes and is important to determine whether or not your child would benefit from therapy, and what form intervention might take. It may involve formal and/or informal assessment through play, alongside observation, discussions or reading of reports from other professionals.

In certain circumstances, (e.g. complex cases), this session may last longer or further assessment sessions may be recommended (e.g. school visit). Additional hours spent are charged at £90 per hour.

In some cases, where sufficient assessment outcomes are available from another therapist in either the NHS or Private Practice, a full assessment session may not be required. This decision is made at the therapist’s discretion.

For children presenting solely with speech sound difficulties we offer a Speech Sound report. For all other children including those with social communication and receptive/expressive language difficulties, we offer a Comprehensive Report. Reports are sent by email, and are password protected. If you do not require a written report, the therapist will provide a very brief email summary but this will not include specific details or targets.

Standard therapy session

A therapy session lasts between 30-45 minutes, depending on the nature of the intervention and/or the child’s ability to attend to activities. Therapy sessions include direct work with the child as well as time for discussions and feedback with parents/teaching staff. The fee charged also covers the therapist’s time spent prior to the session to plan and prepare resources, any necessary liaison and time spent following the session to write notes, feedback and send resources for homework as appropriate.

School/nursery visit

A school/nursery visit might be made with parental agreement and most typically involves an observation of your child in their educational setting alongside discussions with school staff. These typically take 60 minutes.

Written home/school therapy programme

If requested, the therapist will provide written documentation setting out both long term and short term targets for your child, alongside ideas for strategies and activities that you and/or educational staff can carry out in order to support them to achieve their therapy goals.

Other services/liaison

Attendance at meetings and multi-disciplinary discussions as well as liaison or written correspondence with other professionals including written referrals, will be charged at the same hourly rate as standard therapy sessions. Attendance at meetings will be discussed and agreed with parents and others involved in advance. Progress reports or referrals to other professionals will also be charged at the hourly rate.

Reports and therapy programmes will be sent to parents/carers for them to distribute as appropriate.

If your child is also seen on the NHS, collaborative work with NHS speech and language therapists is necessary to ensure that your child will benefit as much as possible from both sources of input.

Working hours

All of our therapists work during term-time, and each therapist sets their own working days and hours. Your therapist will commit to offering your child a regular term-time session.

Therapy during school holidays is offered at the discretion of each therapist – prior to each school holiday, your therapist will liaise with you to let you know whether they will be able to offer holiday sessions. It is likely that you may be offered a session at a different day/time to your usual session during holidays.

Payment

Fees for Initial Assessment is payable at the point of booking – payment must be received at least 24 hours prior to the assessment in order for the assessment to proceed.

Following this, sessions will be invoiced monthly, to be paid by bank transfer. Clients are requested to settle their invoice when it is received, and at the latest within 3 days of receipt.

If payment is not received within 7 days, we reserve the right to cancel subsequent appointments until the invoice has been settled.

Parental/Carer Involvement/Homework

During the therapy sessions it is expected that a carer will be present to observe the session so that therapy activities and homework activities can be continued throughout the week. It is expected that homework activities will be completed.  This will ensure your child makes maximum progress with their speech and language development.

Audio and video recording

At times, the therapist may wish to make an audio or video recording of your child during assessment or therapy sessions. This may be to allow the therapist to analyse speech and language samples after the session, or indeed to share audio or video clips with you, for example if your child is seen at school or nursery. Recordings will never be used for anything other than professional use, nor will they be shared with anyone other than parents. Therapists will destroy all recordings after they have been analysed or sent to parents. By signing this form you consent to recordings being made.

Medico-legal Work

Help Me To Talk therapists do not undertake medico-legal work. We do not offer services as part of tribunal cases or give permission for our reports or written correspondence to be used as evidence in a tribunal

Confidentiality and Safeguarding

All personal information gathered during assessment and treatment sessions will remain confidential and secure unless:

• Your prior approval has been obtained to either provide a written report to another professional or agency (e.g. a GP) or discuss the material with another person (e.g. nursery practitioner)
• Information is subpoenaed by a court or there are child protection concerns

In the event of a Safeguarding concern, we have a legal obligation to share that information with relevant professionals in line with the Children’s Safeguarding Act 2004. Help Me To Talk’s full privacy policy, in accordance with GDPR regulations is available to download on our website www.helpmetotalk.co.uk

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Cancellation Policy

When you book your child in for therapy, you and your therapist will agree on a ‘regular frequency’ of sessions – this will usually be once weekly during term time. Your therapist will offer you a regular, recurring session. Your therapist will commit to allocating this session for your child, and will not offer the session to another child. In accepting this time slot, you are committing to attend the sessions at the agreed frequency.

We understand that some cancellations are inevitable – we recognise that people take time away for holidays, and that children can be fine one minute and poorly the next, and we try to offer a fair and reasonable policy.

Short-notice cancellations will incur a cancellation fee. A cancellation 24 hours or less before the session is considered to be short-notice, and it is likely your therapist will have already spent time preparing for the session at this point. The first short-notice cancellation will incur a £25 admin fee. For any subsequent short-notice cancellations, the full cost of the session will be charged.

Missed sessions with no notice given will always be charged in full. This includes occasions where the client does not attend the therapist’s base at the agreed time, or where the therapist travels to the therapy location to find the child absent. If mileage has been incurred, this will also be charged.

For sessions cancelled with greater than 24 hours-notice there will be no charge. However, because we have made a commitment to offer a regular session to your child, we ask that you try to minimise cancellations as much as possible – even with notice, single ad hoc sessions are difficult to fill.

If you cancel more than 3 sessions per term, we reserve the right to charge in full for any further cancellations in that same term if we are unable to fill the slot. If sessions are cancelled frequently, we may no longer be able to offer you a consistent session each week.

If the therapist cancels an appointment due to unforeseen circumstances, the session can be re-arranged at a date and time which is convenient for the client and the therapist.

Parents are free to withdraw a child from therapy at any time, with a weeks’ notice. Equally, the therapist may recommend therapy be stopped if at any time it is considered that therapy is no longer being effective or is no longer appropriate. If referral to a more specialist therapist is advised, the therapist may make appropriate recommendations.

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Fee Structure

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Additional Services

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Mileage

Mileage is charged at 50p per mile beyond a 5 mile radius of the therapist’s base

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