Published by JohnL on 14 August 2005
in News.
Carolyne Bates, parent of a child with Learning Disabilities, started a job-training program aimed at students with LD in Selma (AL, USA), according to a story in the Selma Times-Journal by Valerie Ashmon. Ms. Ashton reports that the program is called “Supported Employment Training Transition and that it is a aprt of the Selma Disabilities Advocacy Program.”The SETT project, which runs through the summer, includes academic instruction as well as opportunities to learn clerical, landscaping, and other skills.
“The SETT program was founded in 1999,” Bates said. “It was founded because children with special needs were left out of a lot of programs.”
“I’m a special needs person myself,” she said. “I knew the struggle that I had to go through years ago.”
“The Mental Health (center) addressed adults and the Rehabilitation Center basically addressed handicapped kids,” Bates said. “There was a need for a program for children with learning disabilities.”
Link to Ms. Ashton’s story. Also, Ms. Ashmon’s story has been picked up by “I Just Heard” (an echo service that scrapes stories from Google and Yahoo): 12 August and 13 August.
On National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Ketzel Levine reported about a family that has opened a company to promote vision therapy. Although the angle for the story is “people reinventing themselves,” there is a pretty strong undertone endorsing vision therapy.
Last time I checked, those who advocated vision therapy as a means of helping people learn to read did not have a strong scientific base. Before I challenge the basis for this story, I have to go to the library and determine whether there is new evidence supporting it and overturning earlier evidence. For example, there is the possibility that the practices used in vision therapy have changed and those who employ these newer methods are, in fact, helping children, youth, and adults learn to read.
Even without formally reviewing the literature, I know that trustworthy sources such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, and American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO), and American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus have issued policy statements dismissing optometric training for Learning Disabilities and including “Optometric vision training” in a list of “methods [that] have not been proven to work in scientific studies” for ADHD. Also, optometrists such a Russell Worrall have strongly criticized optometric training.
One thing that I’ll bet happens is that advocates will refer to individual cases where they can show success, claiming those successes as evidence. For those of us who say “hooray for the patient,” but are not willing to accept anecdotal evidence as providing a scientific base for a practice, this will be yet another challenge. It is very difficult to get people to put aside personal experience in deference to strong research, a point that—ironically—was made 2 August in an NPR story by Allison Aubrey on dietary supplements.
Links:
The Division for Learning Disabilities is holding its annual conference, Briding the Gap between Research and Practice, in Charleston (SC; US) in November and I’m encouraging attendance. Yes, it is true that I had something to do with it. And, yes, I’ll be presenting a session there, too. That’s why this entry has the title it has. But, no, I don’t make any $$, £, ¢, ¥, or other ¤ (aren’t entities fun?) from the conference.
As in the past, this year’s sessions are jammed with top-flight presenters who will provide the most up-to-date content about practices that have strong evidenciary bases and are ready for prime-time use with individuals who have Learning Disabilities. The setting is wonderful. The conference is intimate and intensive.
Link to learn more about the conference and register on line.
I often find it informative to listen to people’s experiences about disabilities. Though the evidence is anecdotal at best, not scientific, it helps me to stay grounded, to keep perspective. On The Age (Australian news site) Imogene Stubbs provided a first person view of having a son with Learning Disabilities that served just this function.
Here’s her lead:
My nine-year-old son was excited when I asked him to help me with this article. But he didn’t want to have to write anything. After 30 agonising minutes and the promise of a baseball glove, this is what he produced:
“when I do riting and pariigrafs my brayn is uncunferdbl and herts and i get the writ word but wen it travls down my arm it disapeeurs befour it coms out of my hand and sumtymes im chrying.”
Ms. Stubbs touches on many topics—causes, characteristics, prevalence, educational practices—and other wonderful tidbids, sadly mixed in with some misinformation (e.g., focusing educational efforts on self-esteem), that make this article worth reading. Here’s a particularly sage observation:
What else have we done? We have leapt on every bandwagon going. We have chucked fish oils down his gullet; we have had him focusing on light-beams in dark rooms; we have encouraged him to walk backwards down a line, counting plastic frogs; we have watched him balancing on boards while catching bean-bags, occasionally between his teeth. It all merges into a slightly lunatic blur.
Maybe some things help, but then maybe so does changing the breakfast cereal. It is so hard to tell what is real improvement and what is part of natural development or simply your desperation to believe. Yet every new “solution” demands an expensive and time-consuming commitment.
Read this one. Hurry, though. The Age only keeps articles live for 10 days. Link.
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