You can contact us directly with your enquiry here.
Parents cannot refer a child to the service directly, however, we run regular parent courses and will respond to email and telephone questions. Please click here for Parent/Carer Workshops & Courses
Before we will consider doing an assessment we need to know the following:
What are the child’s barriers to learning?
What has been done to address them so far?
What have been the outcomes of any interventions?
What other advice has been sought?
What recommendations were made?
What were the outcomes?
What will an assessment contribute to our understanding of the child’s barriers to learning?
Before you ask for an assessment consider the following:
If your child/pupil is dyslexic we will test areas that they will find difficult. As a result an assessment probing characteristic features of dyslexia may be a very stressful experience for a child.
How would you feel if your child/pupil turns out not to be dyslexic?
There is no extra money that will be coming to the school as a result of a diagnosis.
There is an obligation to address any barrier to learning when it become obvious, regardless of whether a child has a diagnosis of dyslexia.
The younger the child, the more difficult it is to say whether an apparent difficulty is as a result of dyslexia or just a normal developmental stage. However, a loud warning bell should ring if there is dyslexia in the family and the child has difficulties acquiring age appropriate speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. In addition there may be difficulties over learning nursery rhymes, the days of the week, months of the year, tying shoe laces and how to dress. Persistent problems with routines and personal organisation may also make you sit up.
Schools have an obligation to meet the needs of all children and must tell you if something is done differently for your child. The principle guiding intervention is ‘assess, plan, do, review’. As a parent you should be involved in the process. If adequate progress is not made after two cycles, an appropriate outside agency or specialist should be invited to contribute to the next cycle of intervention.
Remember that there may not be a magic wand to address your child’s barriers to learning. Not everyone is going to find school easy. The most important thing you can do as a parent is to make sure that your child feels good about themselves and remain interested in learning.
Never give up trying to find something that your child wants to read and read children’s books widely yourself. Teach how to choose books well and spend as much time as it takes to find something they are willing to read. In our experience the following has worked well with reluctant readers who are not yet reading fluently:
Shadow the Kate Greenaway Medal which is awarded for the best illustration in a children’s book
The publisher Barrington Stoke prides itself on the dyslexia friendly formats of its books
Read books of films such as Hank Zipzer
Read graphic novels. Stories such as Dracula, for example, are available in lots of different versions of varying difficulty
Read books which have a good website attached to them such as Alex Rider
Read books which come in a series such as Tom Gates
Read eBooks
Read books which also come in an electronic or digital format such as this
For some of our favourite titles click here
We are usually invited into a school by a member of the Senior Management team, inset coordinator or SENDCo (Special Educational Needs Coordinator). By that stage a pupil should have gone through two cycles of individualised, well monitored and evaluated cycles of intervention planned by the school’s SENDCo. If other advice from an outside agency has already been sought, a further two cycle of intervention should have been completed and evaluated.
If you have any concerns that your child may be dyslexic, you need to contact the SENDCo (Special Educational Needs Coordinator) of your child’s school in the first instance and discuss your concerns. If you would like the Dyslexia Outreach Service to be involved, then please discuss this with the SENDCo who can get in touch with us.
