Eating and drinking
Eating, drinking and swallowing needs are often referred to as Dysphagia. This describes eating and drinking difficulties in children. These could include:
- positioning food in the mouth
- sucking
- chewing
- moving the food around
- swallowing
Sometimes you may hear professionals talk about ‘aspiration’. Aspiration refers to either food, fluids, stomach contents and saliva entering the airways and lungs.
What might you notice if your child is finding Eating and Drinking difficult?
- coughing, choking, spluttering or throat clearing
- facial colour changes (e.g. going pale, or reddening)
- rapid blinking or eyes watering
- wet or gurgly sounding voice
- other indications of distress or discomfort while eating or drinking, e.g. grimacing
Making a request for support
Speech and Language Therapy are able to consider Requests for Support for children who have:
- obvious signs of difficulty in chewing and / or swallowing. This could include:
- difficulty in establishing oral feeding, possibly related to prematurity
- medical conditions or syndromes which are impacting on chewing and swallowing
- frequent chest infections alongside any of the above points
- continued difficulties with eating, drinking and swallowing where advice from other professionals has not helped
- choking
- coughing
- eyes watering
- colour change
- respiratory distress
- gurgly voice quality
Assessment by Speech and Language Therapy cannot be offered to children with:
- difficulties around weaning. Including:
- food preferences which are behavioural and/or sensory. For example
- poor appetite
- refusing solids
- spitting food out
- refusing lumps
- food refusal
- limited range of foods
- restricted diet
What information to include on a request for support
Anyone, including parents and carers, can request support from Speech and Language Therapy. You can do this via our request for support referral form. If there concerns regarding a child’s eating, drinking and swallowing it is preferred if the person requesting support has observed the child’s eating and drinking.
It is extremely helpful to also include the following information:
- are there other professionals involved
- medical history (e.g. any formal diagnosis, history of chest infections, respiratory status)
- medications
- do they have any Physical, Visual or Hearing Impairments
- changes in eating and drinking
- how they take their foods and fluids
We have an additional eating, drinking and swallowing request for support form [WORD 71KB] that can be used to capture this information. This can be attached and sent with the main Request for Support Form.
Assessment of the child’s eating and drinking may include:
- observation of a mealtime
- discussion with parents
- discussion with key adults in your child’s nursery/school
Recommendations will be shared verbally and in writing.
If the assessment highlights a risk off aspiration, a request for further medical assessment, such as Videofluoroscopy, is required. This is likely to mean a referral to larger hospital that has the facilities, for example Newcastle or Manchester.