Dyslexia

Reading time 7 minutes

The heart of the British Library, The King's Library was one of the most important collections of books and pamphlets of the Age of Enlightenment. Assembled by George III.

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. -- Frederick Douglass 1818-1895

important figure in the abolitionist movement in America.

Understand the importance of education.

Identified as Dyslexic at primary school by the teacher attempting have children stand and read out load in class. And Received learnings support from the Bloomfield clinic an hour a week.

Opened in 1973 as the Worlds first purposed built centre dedicated to multi-disciplinary Child Psychology and Psychiatry at Guy’s Hospital.

Traveling during the heights of IRA campaigns in London, situated across the road from early HIV AIDS centre considered the gay plague at the time, on the original site now stands one of the leading Cancer Research centre's.

continues assessment was introduced in 1989 and with the learning support Bloomsfields clinic provided I was the only child to pass all of my subjects with no mention of Dyslexia in the newspaper report.

Before children where failed by the education system for decades their whole future deciding on a single day final exam i.e. nerves, bereavement, hunger, pain, family or social issues. Etc

Today the learning center continues to provide children and young adults with specialist assessment and literacy teaching for dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties, supporting Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and work primarily with families from poor socio-economic backgrounds who are unable to afford for specialist assessment and literacy teaching. Registered Charity number No. 1016894

Bloomfield centre the Worlds first purpose built centre for children with learning disabilities, GUYS Hospital London.

Adult reading, it’s reported that There are 2.4 million adults in England, who cannot read, or struggle to read, and they are five times more likely to be unemployed.

The cost to society is far greater if their is a lack of investment in early professional assessment and learning support for Children, who can easily become frustrated and disillusioned with education and fall through the net, be exploited by others i.e. gangs, drugs and grooming, limiting their future educational outcomes / earning potential, and turning to crime to meet their future financial needs. - over half of adult prisoners have a reading age lower than 11. figures show only 5.1% of people with additional needs are in paid employment, employers may be missing out on a rich and untapped pool of talent.

Because of lack of focus by Consecutive governments, disadvantaged families find it difficult to gain access to professional assessment and learning support for there children and funding which they often have to meet the cost themselves, once the assessment has taken place delays in funding and access to professional learning support, mean children can wait long into their education. see MedicalTech

50 years on from when Bloomfields opening its doors, all Care and Health workers in England, connected with the CQC The Care Quality Commission are now Legally required to receive training in Learning disabilities and Autism, highlighting the need for professional understanding in care.

The era was the beginning of the end of apartheid in South African, the sixthform college joined Southwark college and moved a short distance to Bermondsey and was subjected to a hate campaign by English Far Right which included gun violence towards a Black student, after false claims the college which was at capacity, was not excepting local residents, the year before the racist murder of black British teenager Stephen Lawrence in South London in April 1993 and the high profile failings of the criminal investigation and trials, his brother Stuart Lawrence is now a Member of the London Policing Board, to monitor the Met. note: the Stephen lawrence inquiry took place at the Elephant and Castle.

North Peckham Estate 1989 Credit: London Evening Standard one of the most deprived residential areas in Western Europe

The Young feeling like they needed to carry a tool to protect themselves, Peckham became synonyms with the teenage gang Black on Black murder of ten-year-old Nigerian schoolboy Damilola Taylor in 2000, while the area was undergoing redevelopment including at the end of the dry canal pathway the building of Peckham Library and community building designed by Alsop and Störmer, engineered by AKT II and won of the Stirling Prize for Architecture in 2000.

Banksy Artwork on Commercial Way Peckham North Dec 2023 stolen within 30 min of unveiling my sixthform was on commercial way where the Artwork was unveiled.

Met the current staff at Bloomfield's in 2019 who are passionate about teaching all children to read, and have produced decoding English books tools for teachers, support staff and parents, for primary and secondary school age in line with the UK Department of Education's new systematic synthetic phonics SSP teaching programs link.

Bloomfield Centre Alumni include many successful Londoners amongst them, teachers, journalists, computer scientists and engineers. Famous dyslexic people in history include Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Steven Spielberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Richard Branson and more..

10-15% of the general population is dyslexic, the Worlds top post graduate university the RCA improving design and humanity subjects is approx 29% are dyslexic, and last I looked at NASA over 50% of its staff identify as Dyslexic,

The Royal College of Art “Because dyslexia is associated with heightened visual and spatial awareness, problem-solving skills and lateral-thinking abilities,”

Disability support.

Example of text to speech software used to scan books and image recognition Read and Write Gold and Dragon naturally speaking. Voice recognition.

Disability support.

I was technical assistant to a Blind Caribbean Poet (Trinidadian), speech to text, voice and text recognition technology have long been available to support people who are either visually impaired, learning disabilities, or amputees.

Mother of the most senior police officer in the Metropolitan police from the Caribbean, using a computer for all of her personal and business correspondence escorted her to screening of short film with her poetry at the NFT national film theatre, it was made clear there was those from many quarters wanting to discredit him.

Scottish missionary workers educated the illiterate Trinidadian Indians migrants and established the top schools seen today as the educated elite.

Trinidad only introduced a disability discrimination act in the last couple of years and has a low rate of literacy Libraries represent almost 2 per 100,000 of the population. This is lower than the averages for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) (3.4 per 100,000) and the world (6.8 per 100,000), learning with mobile devices discussed with leading academics there real concern of shorter attention spans and the end of internet neutrality delivering paid content faster which easily diverts attention from studying and education. free Award winning library Libby App link simply sign in with your library card, which can be obtained online.

Late starters, Adult literacy for people with English as a second language, Current initiative for refugee communities from Syria and the Ukraine to tackle social exclusion, libraries of sanctuary link

In the Caribbean told BLM Black Lives Mater is a racial American thing while the violent crime and murder rates in the Caribbean are one of the highest in the World. And the education system favours the wealthy and final exams still decides a child’s whole future.

Consecutive governments missed a trick to improve society in continuous assessment and learning support and it only got worse. Don’t do well in your exams then struggle to financially provide for their family and have to turn to crime to survive, while children are exposed to drugs at an early age.

Bloomfield Learning centre Registered Charity number No. 1016894 (supporting Children with Dyslexia and other Learning Disabilities)