Notes from the Spring Convention

Held on Saturday 14 June 2008

Welcome

The meeting was opened by BDA Chair, Margaret Malpas, who welcomed delegates to the meeting. She highlighted some key activities, including the recent BDA International Conference, as examples of the BDA raising its profile and “punching above its weight”.
In her role, developing the training arm of the charity, Margaret drew attention to the variety of training courses on offer which not only led to a better understanding of dyslexia amongst teachers, governors, parents and employers, but also provided excellent opportunities for networking. She spoke of plans, in conjunction with the CASS Business School, to work with professionals with dyslexia, to further raise the profile of the BDA. Margaret likened the BDA to a champagne bottle waiting to be “popped”.
Margaret invited BDA Chief Executive, Judi Stewart, to provide a half yearly update on BDA activities; Jim Malpas (BDA Treasurer) to update on Training activities and Jennifer Owen Adams (BDA Education Director) to provide and update on policy and campaigning.

Update on half-yearly activities – Judi Stewart

1. Judi began by reflecting on the assets of the BDA:

2. Judi focused on the BDA vision:

“A dyslexia friendly society enabling all dyslexic people to reach their potential.”
She explained what was meant by the vision under the three headings:

Judi went on to look in detail at the work the BDA was doing under each of these headings.

3. Creating Change. Judi gave examples under three headings:


3.1 Employability Campaign

The success of the ‘Code of Practice for Employers’ publication has meant we have recently had to get it reprinted.
Working with Lucid to launch the “SPOT your potential” screening tool which is designed for individuals to screen themselves.
Working with CASS Business School, the BDA will shortly be launching a mentoring scheme using successful dyslexic entrepreneurs to assist the dyslexic individual who is either entering the workforce or who would like to enhance their coping strategies. The BDA is actively seeking funding for this. In the long term we may role out this programme to such difficult areas as the prisons.

3.2 Accessible Formats. (Jennifer Owen Adams)


3.3 Early Identification and support for children.


4. Setting Standards. The BDA is setting standards through:

5. Supporting and enabling.

5.1 The National Helpline, funded by a grant from the DCSF,

5.2 Coping Strategies. The BDA is planning a number of events and conferences which highlight suitable assistive technology for people with dyslexia and provide hints and tips. These include:


5.3 Continuing the theme of ‘Supporting and Enabling’,

6. BDA Financial Situation

6.1 Judi Stewart reported that on average monthly income was now greater than expenditure but the BDA has four major liabilities:


6.2 Judi highlighted one are of the BDA’s work to demonstrate how we are trying to change the practices which led to the BDA’s financial crisis. She gave the example of Membership and Publications which had risen from £98K in 2006/07 to £115K in 2007/08 but expenditure had fallen from £115K to £70K. Judi said the reduction in costs was mostly salaries and members may now feel they receive a less personal service from the BDA but she felt sure everyone recognised the need to keep income greater than expenditure.

‘Transition from Primary to Secondary School – the Afasic model’

Adele Bird, Chairman of Waltham Forest Dyslexia Association, gave the following, very inspiring presentation:
“Thank you for inviting me to speak on behalf of the Waltham Forest Dyslexia Association (fondly known as WFDA) about a new project we are piloting this year.

I became Chairman of WFDA last November, so this is my first experience of the national BDA. I recognise that there are 2 types of people who approach and become involved with the BDA. Dyslexia trained specialists and education and psychology personnel and individuals personally affected by dyslexia – ie the supply and the demand. I fall into the demand category. Because of this I am a layman when it comes to dyslexia.

I became involved with our Association simply because I was a concerned parent of a child with dyslexia, so because I’m a layman, please don’t expect me to use or understand dyslexia or special educational needs jargon.

Let me briefly tell you the story of my daughter Jessica. I have 10 year old twins. My son was able to read before he started school, but my daughter struggled even with the three words that would come home from Reception in the pencil case. I thought Jessica was normal and Matthew exceptional. However, by year 1 her teachers were concerned that her spelling wasn’t phonologically sound. I think it was identified as early as that because she was a twin and it was a one class entry school, so the comparison between them showed that it was nothing to do with the home environment – lack of access to books and reading for example. I have then been through all the battles and hurdles that most of us seem to have to tackle to get further concerns identified in year 2, Educational Psychologist involvement in year 3 and finally extra support in class in year 4 etc. etc. So that is why I became involved on a personal basis, finding WFDA to be a valuable lifeline.

Professionally I work as a Director of Recruitment for a consultancy that works solely in the charity sector. I recruit senior staff for registered charities and have had a career in fundraising, charity management and recruitment for the charity sector for the last 20 years. I am therefore not new to that sector, so am professional in that way, but am lay in terms of dyslexia and the education sector. After that preamble, let me begin.

The project that I’m here to talk about that we are piloting is a week long summer school for children with dyslexia or dyspraxia who are in transition from primary to secondary school.
The course is modelled on one that has taken place in some London Boroughs and one other location, built up during the last 8 years, in partnership with the speech and language charity Afasic and the Speech and Language teams in those locations.

Back in March, I attended a discussion day organised by a local children’s charity in our Borough on the emotional issues of Transition. I heard about the event through WFDA, but attended as I was already encountering issues and concerns around transition for my twins who are now in year 5.
While listening to the numerous speakers during the day, I was enthused and inspired by a presentation given by the Waltham Forest Speech and Language department about this Summer Course they run in partnership with Afasic for children with Speech and Language impairments.
As they described the course, I could see how it seemed to almost exactly address the challenges children with dyslexia or dyspraxia would encounter in transition to secondary school.
The objectives of the course they outlined were:

  • Addressing pupils’ concerns about transfer

  • Preparing the pupils for differences they will encounter in the secondary environment

  • Empowering the children with strategies for problem solving

  • Improving their social and organisational skills

    • The course covers a range of skills and topics and aims to be fun – it is asking the children to come to school for a whole week during the summer holidays after all, so there has to be some incentive!
    The course introduces features of secondary school including:

  • Having a timetable and learning how to read it – which lesson at what time, which location, which teacher etc.

  • Having a course diary

  • They are given a small daily homework task

  • They are taught to read maps to navigate their way around a secondary school building and also for their journey to and from school

    • Some of the courses have included a Q&A session with a year 7 child who can answer the children’s questions around their experience. Needless to say the child is well briefed beforehand on what to say and what not to say!
    During the course the children explore topics such as:

  • Bullying – how to deal with it and who to tell

  • Making and keeping new friends

  • Getting help when required, including how and when to interrupt a teacher appropriately

  • A range of problem solving strategies

  • Improving their listening skills

  • Understanding the need for school rules and how to avoid the dreaded detentions

  • Opportunities to correct the misconceptions many of the children may have from hearsay.

    • Having heard of such a course dealing with these issues, I discussed it with other parents at our literacy and touch typing classes the following week. Two of them had children in year 6 and were really keen on the idea for their children. One of them even went away and contacted the Speech and Language department in our borough to see if they would include their child on the course. Unfortunately they wouldn’t as they only offer it to children on their speech and language impairment register.
    So I decided to explore the idea further and contacted Afasic. I explained how I’d heard about the course and how I felt it almost exactly addressed the challenges of transition for children with dyslexia or dyspraxia. They completely agreed, and I was overwhelmed to find an email just 24 hours later telling me that they would let me have access to all their course materials and support, and a £3,000 grant for us to pilot the course this Summer!

    Now that I had 2 parents interested in the course for their children, funding and the resources, I knew I had to make it happen and I now needed to find a venue.
    A secondary school building seemed the perfect location, as I wanted it to be in that environment to really give the children a taste of secondary school. However, I didn’t want them to rattle around – a small group of children in a building that takes over 1000.

    Two of my co-Trustees have children at The Forest School so suggested I contact that school. This seemed perfect to me as a Summer Camp is held there, so there would be lots of other children bustling around for that. Also, because private schools have to be seen to do things that support the local community in order to retain their charitable status, it seemed that the Forest School may be willing to help for that reason if no other. I found that they were willing to help. However, instead of offering us the bear minimum, to meet that criteria, they are bending over backwards to be accommodating and have offered us use of a whole host of facilities including the swimming pool, theatre, art room, woodwork room, IT suite, a chill out room with a pool table and a link to the summer camp so that we can access go karts, a trampoline and a climbing wall. All free of charge.

    I then needed to find teachers. Some of our literacy and touch typing tutors agreed to be involved and I have promoted the vacancies through a mailing to SENCo’s and schools in our borough. I now have a mixture of qualified dyslexia trained teachers, qualified teachers, classroom assistants and some 16-18 year olds too.
    A meeting is planned next week with the qualified teachers and one of our new literacy tutors will act as a kind of Head Teacher and co-ordinate the timetable and programme and allocate the staff to the different activities and sessions.

    Because of the resources we have available to us at the school, we will be able to teach the course in a very creative way, and I am hoping to include drama to get some of the messages across. For example, role playing of what looks like good listening – posture and attitude and what looks like bad listening. Maybe role play a bullying and a making friends scenario too. I am particularly keen to use creative activities to get the messages across, as this addresses the multi-sensory approach and for many children with dyslexia, the creative side can also be where they excel. Therefore this week at a secondary school will be a positive experience, doing things they can excel at and then enabling them to start in September with a positive attitude to secondary school.

    I also selected a secondary school building, so they can have the practical experience and challenge of finding their way to different parts of a school building in time for different lessons. There is nothing like doing it for real – the multi-sensory approach again. The next thing I needed to do was promote the course. This is where I started to learn more about recording incidences of dyslexia compared with speech and language impairment. The Speech and Language unit hold a register of children, so immediately know which families to contact. No such list exists for children with dyslexia. So we have promoted the course through interschool mailings to SENCo’s and heads and through our Borough Parent Partnership newsletter and Educational Psychologists.

    I really struggled to get anyone in our Education Department to talk to me about this project, even after talking to the Mayor of our Borough of that frustration on 2 separate and unrelated occasions. Finally however, I have made it through and they have sent a mailing out promoting it too. We have also sent a mailing to our WFDA membership and we have promoted it at our classes as well. So far 15 pupils are signed up. I was only going to offer 15 places, but, with the number of staff offering their services (23 at the last count although I don’t need and can’t afford to use them all) I will offer places to 20 and split them into 2 groups of 10.

    There is a tool that they will be given out and worked on with the children on the Course – a Communication Passport. In this they will be able to list things they have trouble with, things they can do to help themselves and things their teachers can do to help them. If they then have a problem, they can show this wallet sized communication passport to the teacher. Speech and Language have an example from a parent who said that her son kept getting into trouble for forgetting his PE kit. She reminded him he had this communication passport with him all the time, so he showed it to the PE teacher who then understood and worked out ways to help him remember his kit in the future. I can see such a tool being very useful for the children on our course to take away and assist them when they start secondary school. If possible, I hope that we can also help each individual student plan and map the route they themselves will have to take to their secondary school, helping give them the confidence for that which can also be a daunting part of transition.

    My hopes for this course are that it will give children with dyslexia or dyspraxia a rare head start. Also, as I mentioned before, give them a positive experience of the secondary school environment – not straight in to face classes with subjects with which they often struggle. I hope that our course will be a variation on the speech and language one, and be a course that could then be rolled out and used by others.

    I also had a bit of a hidden agenda with this course. Since becoming Chairman of WFDA, I wanted to find a way to build a relationship with the Education Department and I felt this course would be an ideal opportunity to open that door. It has, and I am delighted to report that I have been invited to join the Working Party to support schools to ensure the SEN Inclusion Development Programme is well delivered in our Borough. Hopefully that will lead to WFDA being recognised, involved in, and listened to on dyslexia issues within the Education Department and the Borough’s schools.

    I now look forward to the course taking place from 4th August. I will be very happy to feed back to any of you that are interested, the outcomes from it. We will be asking the students what they feel about secondary school before they start the course, and then again at the end of it, and then we hope to follow up a few months after they started school, to see if they felt it did help them.

    The course will be free and we are really hoping that the schools have helped us identify hard to reach children, children whose parents are not particularly proactive in helping support their child’s difficulties.
    When speech and language did the questionnaire for children before the course, a couple of them expressed no real concerns about transition, but at the end of the course expressed some. The reason was that they were clueless as to what to expect, so were fearless, but, after the course, now had a better understanding of what to expect, so were better resourced to cope. These are the children who need our help the most.”

    7. Membership Proposal.

    Part 1 – LAB Regional Amendment Proposal.

    Robert Venables, Management Board Observer presented the following proposal on behalf of the Local Associations Board (LAB). “It has been suggested by the LAB that the areas used for selecting members of the LAB should be adapted to coincide with the Government’s Regions. The purpose of this paper is to consider the effect that would have on the membership of LAB, and the BDA areas used.

    Annex 1Annex 1lists in columns 1 and 2, the BDA regions as they are now. Column 3 shows the areas which would be gained and/or lost by each, and in column 4 the name of the current LAB member.

    Annex 2 is an attempt to show the areas on a map taken from the internet. The boundaries shown in green are the BDA regions as they are now. The boundaries shown in red are the boundaries of the Government Regions.

    Annex 3 is a map, prepared by Jean Hutchins, showing the Local Associations/Support Groups in each existing BDA LAB region.

    Annex 4 is a map, prepared by Jean Hutchins, showing the Local Associations/Support Groups in each of the Government regions.
    There are some particular points to note.


    Part 2 – Membership proposal to join Local Dyslexia Associations (LDAs) and Support Groups (DSGs) and act as one with the BDA.

    1. Judi Stewart outlined the proposal to merge LDAs and DSGs with representation from both ‘Groups’ on the Management Board through the Local Associations Board (LAB). Under this proposal:-

  • BDA brand would be franchised to the ‘Group’ with jointly agreed rules and conditions;

  • Groups would be independent of the BDA but linked by common objectives, goals and brand;

  • Existing and new ‘Groups’ maintain or gain charitable status, if they wish;

  • The BDA would work towards centralised membership with the LDAs and DSGs.

    • 2. Those attending the meeting received the Local Groups Review background paper explaining the current differences and similarities between LDAs and DSGs.

    3. Judi explained that if members ultimately agreed to the proposal, there would be a step by step process of change.

    4. Judi outlined the following timetable for change:

  • A small group will be set up to draw up the detailed proposal;

  • Between now and the AGM, there will be consultation with LDAs and DSGs through the LAB;

  • A “fleshed out” proposal will be put to members at the AGM in November 2008;

  • Steps from there would depend on members agreement to the proposal.

    • 5. Arran Smith, Young representative on the LAB, went on to argue the case for change:

    5.1 To bring all LDA and Support groups under one banner , ‘franchised’ –

    6. Arran went on to explain why it is important to work as one:-

    7. Arran outlined some of the suggested criteria for ‘Groups’:-

    Group work – Consideration of both parts of the Membership proposal

    1. Those attending the Convention were divided into 4 groups; each group was asked to consider both parts of the membership proposal, considering particularly:

    2. After 40 minutes of group work, the individual groups fed back to the full meeting. A summary of the feedback from each group is given below.
    Group 1

    1) Regions – no objections

    2) Criteria for new groups:

    3) Branding:

    4) Common ground:

    .

    Group 2

    The group felt it important to protect the organisation from rogue groups/individuals.
    There were also concerns about administration issues – filing accounts with BDA as well as Charity Commission.

    Group 3

    Liked :

    Concern:

    Worry:

    Want:

    Group 4

      1) Geographical regions – seems a good idea in principle. Need to know who is/will be the LAB rep and what they do. 2) Broader membership proposal is a good idea; it should:

      3) Do not like word “franchise”; it implies financial implications. 4) Concern about criteria to join.

    3. Judi Stewart concluded the feedback session by:

    ‘SPOT Your Potential – Kevin Thomas, Lucid. A preview of a new on-line screening tool to be launched in July 2008.

    1. Kevin Thomas, Managing Director of Lucid Research Ltd introduced himself and gave some background information about Lucid and its products.

    2. Lucid’s core product range includes:

    3. Why identify dyslexia?

    4. What is screening?


    4.1 Diagnostic assessment

    4.2 Screening

    4.3 The main differences between diagnostic and screening

    5. Available Screening methods

    6. Accuracy of Screening systems

    7. The benefits of computerised assessment

    8.

    9.

    ‘Project Success’: an update on the BDA WEFO project – Joanne Gregory, BDA Quality Mark Manager and former WEFO Project Manager

    1. Joanne began by outlining the objectives of Project Success:


    The project was funded through the European Social Fund (E.S.F.) It operated in 41 learning centres varying from schools, Pupil Referral Units, Further Education Colleges and Alternative Curriculum Providers. These 41 learning centres were drawn from 15 of the 22 Local Authorities in Wales. The project recruited 1654 beneficiaries , of which 1561 left the project having achieved a successful outcome.

    2. Joanne went on to outline some of the project resources:

    2.1 The Dyscovery Profiling tool. This computer based screening tool was designed by professionals at the Dyscovery Centre in University Wales Newport. It enabled the project personnel to identify young people at risk of difficulties in:

  • Reading and Spelling

  • Social and Communication

  • Attention and Concentration

  • Organisation and Co-ordination

    • 2.2 ‘Roots to Success’. Using this computer based tool, the young person with difficulties and any of the areas identified in 2.1 above, could then be given ideas and strategies on how to help themselves in any of the following areas: