When five-year-old Cali said the word "spider", her mother, Cara, had tears in her eyes.
It was the first time she had ever heard her daughter clearly say a word.
Cali had always found it difficult to form sounds and words, but when she turned two during the Covid lockdown and her parents tried to find her help, it was nearly impossible to access NHS speech therapy services.
"The only appointment was over the phone, and they didn't speak to Cali, they just spoke to me," Cara says.
"I was told to try out some games, and that was the last contact I had with them before she started school last year."
Without help, Cali would get frustrated because she could not make herself understood, and then started to have extreme tantrums in the classroom.
Cara heard about a speech and language unit at the University of Reading, where therapy is provided for free but observed by students.
When Cali first arrived here a year ago, all of her sounds started with a "y" - so if she was counting, Cali would say, "yun, yoo, yee, your…yait, yine, yen."
But with help from the therapists she has made great progress.
"The improvement in her speech is huge," Cara says. "What they have done has helped us so much."
