Seven-year-old Elsa is affected when a speech therapist is missing at the school

- All children should have the same conditions, it should not be about your parents' income or where in the country you live, says Elsa's mother Josefin Durehed about the fact that she and her husband have chosen to pay a speech therapist for Elsa to get continued speech therapy treatment similar to the one she received when she went to so-called language preschool.

Ljungby, where the family lives, is one of many municipalities that do not have an employed speech therapist within the school.

Therefore, Elsa was without speech therapy support when she started preschool class this fall, despite the fact that she still has some difficulty expressing herself and understanding instructions.

- She can also mix words, say about instead of when and she has difficulty with a certain perception of time.

Then it is also difficult to get in touch with new children because she does not really know what to do.

Missing in a majority of municipalities

In fact, there is a lack of speech therapy support linked to the school in a majority of the municipalities that responded to a survey conducted by SVT.

It is also not a legal requirement to have a speech therapist within the municipality.

That Ljungby lacks that competence is thus not formally wrong.

- We have a special educator, speech educator and special teacher in Ljungby municipality but are not obliged to have a speech therapist because we have no treatment responsibility, says Birgitta Bergsten who is head of the central student health in Ljungby municipality. 

But the region, which has the responsibility for treatment, writes out the children from the hospitals' speech therapy clinics in Kronoberg when they turn six years old.

A routine that is also found elsewhere.

Difficult to get a diagnosis

- If you have not been diagnosed with a language disorder before you start school by the region, it is difficult to get a diagnosis after that because there is no speech therapist who sets it, says Birgitta Bergsten.

Mother Josefin believes that she sees the consequences of this in her own job as a teacher in high school.

- I notice from those who feel bad about their language disorder when they get older.

In the clip above, she talks about what she worries about regarding Elsa's language disorder.