Adelaide Selective Mutism Classroom Support

Our first daughter received a small amount of government funded help in school but since the federal funding for SM was slashed under the liberal government, I’ve ended up being my second child’s own support worker!

I feel it would be such a waste not to use the skills and knowledge I’ve gained during our daughters’ recovery from SM to help other families struggling with the same thing. I’m therefore advertising my services as a privately paid support worker to work with your child in their classroom on an as needs basis. Not all parents are able to work with their children in schools as I have done because they need to be out earning, caring for younger siblings and/or often children with SM may talk LESS and be more anxious with their parent present.

The school that my children attend has been fantastic in allowing me access to the classroom whenever I’ve needed to be there, respecting me as the expert on my own children and at working in partnership with me.

Psychologists can work with your child in their office, give you strategies to feed back to the school and will occasionally, if you are lucky, carry out a school visit to observe your child in class and meet the teacher. I have not found a service in Adelaide where you can pay someone to go in and work with your child in the classroom, actually putting in place those strategies recommended by the psychologist though. At the rates a psych charges it would be prohibitively expensive to have a psych provide regular in school support. We paid our daughter’s old SSO from Pre School to come and work with her twice per week for half an hour. She was lovely and had the right temperament to work with an SM child but she did not have any experience of SM children or how to treat them so I still had to mentor her in this endeavour, plan the sessions and liaise with the teachers. In the end it made more sense for me to work less (and at times not at all!) and treat her myself.


Here is some background information on our story:

Our elder daughter was diagnosed by a psychologist at 3y 1m old when we realised that after attending family day care once a week for a year, she had never spoken a single word. She started at a private preschool two months later and there was no funding so I was heavily involved in providing her support. She actually initially spoke freely by the time she finished Pre School. Once she began reception, SM attracted some federal government funding so the school provided the in class support (half an hour three times per week) but I still needed to continually liaise with the class teacher and extended education coordinator. Unfortunately, the school she was at mismanaged the transition to big school; she regressed and became mute again. Halfway through her reception year we moved schools and she began speaking one or two words again to her new teacher straight away. We were very lucky that in Year 1, her class teacher happened to be an expert in Selective Mutism so that took a huge burden off me and I was able to concentrate on diagnosing and treating her little sister instead. During Year 2 she completed her recovery, having had some residual general anxiety and difficulty asserting herself, even though she had begun speaking freely in Year 1. This was also helped by a few counselling sessions. She is now a confident Year 3 girl, no longer on an ILP and we along with her teachers are very proud of her.

My youngest daughter is now six years old and in Year 1. She was diagnosed at three years old and is still in the recovery process. I expected that because she was the second child and we knew what we were doing it would be easier and quicker. Unfortunately, I was wrong! SM presents very differently in individual children, even within the same family. It has been harder to treat her. She had a milder case of SM but because she was generally less anxious she had less motivation to change. We were lucky that at the Pre School she attended they were able to obtain government funding for her to have 1:1 support one morning per week. This was fantastic and she was soon talking to her support worker but not other staff members. The support worker did small group work with our daughter and other children and she began talking to some peers. However, this funding did not continue into Reception and since then I have been heavily involved in her treatment. She has been able to talk to her teacher after school with no other children around and to her friends on the playground for a long time, but until recently she had not spoken in the classroom at all. She is finally now talking to her teacher in a quiet corner and beginning to say a few words to peers in class. We anticipate that she will be talking freely by the end of this school year (2015) and continuing to gain in confidence next year in Year 2 as her sister did.

Selective Mutism is a social anxiety disorder. Social anxiety is the most heritable of all types of anxiety. SM runs in my husband’s family and there are several very shy and anxious people in my family. My husband’s uncle had it severely and was never treated with some serious consequences. My mother in law may have also been a mild case. Of course back in those days, things like that were not diagnosed anyway. My husband believes that he had mild SM, though he of course was also not diagnosed. He got over it in his late teens with some Dutch courage and military training. He is a quietly confident, affable and successful man, but he still finds parties and meeting strangers in group situations difficult.

A bit about me and how the service might work:

I am a former midwife. I was then a Stay at Home Mum for six years. I then returned to part time work doing university research and at the same time set up my own business providing private postnatal support for new Mums. Eventually I gave up the university work as my business became more successful and I also needed to spend more time supporting my daughter at school.

I do not see this Classroom Support as something that is sustainable as a full time career. To run it as a business I would need to cover the whole of Adelaide to find enough children to work with. I would then end up pricing myself out of the market, as I would have to factor in travel time and petrol costs to a greater degree. I also enjoy my postnatal work very much and it’s better paid than working in schools!

I’m really only looking to work with one or two children at a time in the Hills or Eastern Suburbs, so that I still have time to support my daughter and keep one or two regular postnatal clients on at the same time. Any more than that and it would become too difficult to juggle conflicting class timetables.

I would charge the same hourly rate that a casual SSO is paid by schools, which generally ranges from $25-35 per hour for the less specialised workers and I would bill parents using my existing ABN number. It will depend on travel times to your child’s school, how long I would need to stay for per session and how much preparation will be required between sessions as to how much you are likely to spend per week. It is something that would be planned between us, bearing in mind that I understand the difficulties of family budgeting and genuinely want to help at the most reasonable price possible. However, I also know how many hours it takes to coordinate this kind of support having done it for the last five years. There is a lot of work that goes on in between sessions including liaising with the class teacher, preparing fun activities, making help cards, reward charts, lists of goals etc and I will need to charge for this time. However, for any work that can be done at home I will charge the lowest possible rate.

Naturally, I have a police check from assisting in my own children’s school. This is due for renewal in September 2015 and will be done well in advance. I’m also up to date with my First Aid Training; this is done annually due to my work with mothers and babies. Should you require it, I suspect that staff at my children’s school will give me a reference having worked closely with them over the years. I can also provide a midwifery reference and ask postnatal support clients to act as referees.

I do not have any additional qualifications as an educator but this is not specifically required to work as an SSO. There is nothing that prepares you better for working with children with SM than parenting two of them for years!

Please ensure that your child has been properly diagnosed by a psychologist, psychiatrist or other appropriate professional person before we begin support time. It is not up to me as a layperson to make a diagnosis. I will initially only be working with children from Kindy through to Year 2 (Year 3 at a push if there is already some verbalisation or they are young in their year group). If your child is older than this and still has SM, it can be harder to treat and it is probably time to seek more help from a psychiatrist.

The biggest hurdle is going to be how your child’s school principal and class teacher feel about having an outside person being present in their school and classroom. There are many schools who do not allow parents to have Occupational Therapists and other professionals work with their child on school premises. This is very unfortunate for everyone concerned; not just the family, but also the school staff miss out on opportunities for professional development and exchange of ideas with visiting professionals. Other schools welcome this input.

If you would be interested in having me support your child, please give me call to arrange a no-fee first meeting.