New features on this blog

I'm gradually learning about the features of this blogging site and adding some of them to this blog. So far you will see that I have put up a CE in the News feature which gives a few (rather than all,unfortunately) current items found by Google - a taster, that will keep you up to date.

In a previous posting I mentioned trawling the internet for CE news using various search engines which give a fuller picture.

http://ce-library.blogspot.com/2008/07/conductive-education-in-news.html

Note also the translation features from Google and Webforditas (with thanks to Andrew Sutton)

Just for fun, I've added 'this day in history' near the bottom of the page, which so far has included some amazing (if not totally useful!) facts.

Let me know what you think.

Google's birthday

Google is ten years old! Difficult to believe, it only seems like yesterday to me that I first used its services.

You might like to join in the celebrations and offer suggestions for the future

http://www.google.co.uk/tenthbirthday/

Sad case highlights problems and difficulties of parents of disabled children

There has been a lot of media attention to the trial and conviction of a UK mother who drowned her 4year-old daughter with cerebral palsy over the past week. Today in The Times, Alexandra Blair looks at the problems and difficulties faced by parents bringing up disabled children, who battle daily to get services , none of which will be new parents of children with cerebral palsy.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article4820556.ece

These comments are supported by other parents who speak out about the pressures and how close they have come to breaking

http://www.eveningleader.co.uk/news/Parents-of-disabled-children-need.4527081.jp

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2008/09/25/i-weep-for-naomi-and-her-mum-i-know-what-it-s-like-to-get-pushed-to-the-brink-115875-20751469/

including a mother whose child receives Conductive Education

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/09/23/mother-guilty-of-murdering-disabled-naomi-91466-21883091/

and a mother (and journalist) describes her sympathy for the mother of Naomi in the Daily Mail after meeting a man struggling with his severely disabled son in a supermarket car park

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1061302/Yes-evil-act-deserved-punished-So-I-feel-sorry-mother-drowned-little-Naomi.html

Norman Perrin has highlighted similar problems with a posting about the difficulties his adult disabled daughter has obtaining the right care in her own home
http://paces.typepad.com/paces/2008/04/does-anyone-at.html

There are many more examples to be found by searching the internet and I wonder when care will be provided according to need and not according to how much it costs.

I do have an article on the psychological well-being of mothers of children with cerebral palsy written by some researchers at Coventry University, which concludes that

levels of psychological well-being are a cause for concern and warrant exploration of interventions that will reduce maternal distress and increase self eficacy

Barlow, J., and others (2006) Psychological well-being among mothers of children with cerebral palsy. Early Child Development and Care, 176(3-4), pp.421-428.

Getting together - Conductor Associations

Conductors are now working all over the world, some on their own, some in organisations employing more than one conductor, and anything that helps with feelings of professional isolation and offers contact with others in similar situations has got to be of potential benefit. Some conductors have joined together to form associations to help with such circumstances and have created websites to help spread knowledge of their existence, so report of the new website of the German Conductors Association

http://www.konduktorenverband.de/

is very welcome as it joins others on the internet:

Hungarian Conductors Association

http://www.konduktorok.hu/

New Zealand Conductors Association

http://www.nzconductors.org.nz/

European Conductors Association

http://www.institutkeil.at/Kooperationspartner/ECA.html

ACENA (Association for Conductive Education in North America)

http://www.acena.org/ invites membership from conductors working in North America

In the UK, a professional organisation is currently being set up (more news on this as it comes)

These associations offer different things to their members such as a discussion forum, job and membership information, calendar of events and meetings as well as contact details, and are in German, Hungarian and English according to the country.

If anyone knows of any other associations/groups, please let me know.

Visitors

I have been away on holiday without quite being able to forget CE and all things Hungarian as I found a Magyar menu at a taverna on Corfu and saw an aerovista travel bus from Budapest at Stonehenge - perhaps these things have always been around and I just notice them now. Still its nice to be back and also be back to welcome a visitor.

Visitors are always welcome at the Library and tend to come in fits and starts (a bit like buses), and arrive from all over the world. This year they have come from Hong Kong, New Zealand, Hungary and of course, the UK. My visitor this week is from Canada, working for March of Dimes in Toronto and is a graduate of the BA Conductive Education course with qualified conductor status, started in 1997. She is here for her professional development in all aspects of running CE services and hopes to update her knowledge of the CE literature too. There has been quite a lot of items added to the library since she was last here so should be able to take a number of relevant references and possibly photocopies back with her.

If you are in the area or can manage to include a visit, you will be very welcome and it would be a pleasure to show you around the unique collection of material on CE that is here.

My last posting included some references to recent journal articles and I did receive requests for copies of them. It is all part of the library service to provide such copies but I do need to point out that for legal reasons (the Copyright Act of the UK) I do have to make a small charge but I hope this will not put people off, as having photocopies may be the only way of accessing the collection here.

Some new articles

The library has received some new issues of journals over the past couple of weeks which contain a number of articles which may well be of interest.

Families of disabled children today have a very hard time trying to get the services that are needed and dealing with the beaurocracy of the system. One mother writes in Support for Learning about her experiences

We had to struggle and fight to get anything, and, when the service was delivered, it ws provided in the most dehumanizing way possible

Tomlinson, C. (2008) The proof of the pudding is in the eating: two contrasting tales of a family's experience of services. Support for Learning, 23(3), pp.102-103.

Philippa Russell looks at recent trends in government (England and Wales) policy and practice for supporting and involving parents of children with special needs and in particular the Children's Plan and Every Child Matters. She concludes that :

These are ambitious policy developments - but they offer a real opportunity to address the historical fragmentation of support for children with disablities or SE and, importantly they place rights and responsibilities( with appropriate support) on families

Russell, P. (2008) Building brighter futures for all our children' - a new focus on families as partners and change agents in the care and development of children with disabilities or special educational needs.
Support for Learning, 23(3), pp.104-112.

An article in EPPN journal provides a checklist for all people with Parkinson's who drive, and outlines factors to consider.

McCall, B. (2008) Staying in the driving seat.
EPPN Journal, Summer, pp.16-17.

The National Strategy for Carers published by the English government in June is summarised and explained in

Carers UK (2008) A new vision for carers? Caring, July, pp.8-11.

These journals are all available in the National Library and anyone wishing to have copies of the articles should contact me at gill@nice.ac.uk

Maria Hari on conductive pedagogy

Producing Maria Hari on conductive pedagogy took a lot of hard work but was a labour of love. The library had copies of a number of Mari Hari's unpublished papers produced 1968-2000 which deserved a wider audience, so eight were selected, edited and published with explanatory introductions to each by Andrew Sutton. Our aim was to end up with a book which 'explained' Conductive Education in a easy to understand way in the words of someone who knew what it is all about and according to Susie Mallett, it appears that we were successful.

http://www.konduktorin.blogspot.com/

Thanks very much, Susie, feedback is very welcome!

It has proved to be a steady seller since publication in 2004, being purchased by conductors, parents, students, academics and health professionals all over the world and hopefully more and more people will want to buy, read and 'enjoy'. It costs £10.00 plus post and packing of £1.00 in the UK and £2.00 overseas. The other book that Susie mentions, Dina, is also available for £11.95 plus postage and packing as above. Anyone who would like to order either or both books,can do so by contacting me at gill@nice.ac.uk or can order Maria Hari on conductive pedagogy from our bookshop on cafe press.com.

http://www.cafepress.com/foundationce

Anyone else who would like to share their thoughts and opinions of either book, please let us know and I will report views on this blog.

The end of the world as I know it?

Ever since I was a small child, books have held a fascination for me and been an important part of all aspects of my life, work and pleasure. So, today on seeing an article in the Daily Mail about the launch of an electronic book jointly by Sony and Waterstones (the book shop), I had mixed emotions.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1051254/The-electronic-book-spell-end-paperback.html

It is wonderful that modern technology can make it possible to carry 160 books around with you on a small machine about the size of an average paperback and initially this one will come with a free CD allowing you to read such classics as Pride and Prejudice, Dracula and Great Expectations. Wow!

I immediately thought of something I had read several years ago. This announced the Built-in Orderly Organised Knowledge device and talks about technology and books and I have found several URLs for it:

e.g. http://bob.bob.bofh.org/~robm/manual/book.html

This extols the virtues of the printed word - which doesn't need batteries, an on/off switch, never crashes or needs re-booting, has an index to lead you to the part you particularly want to read etc. Libraries historically contain books which provide a bigger selection of information which is just as readily accessible and available (at little or no cost), but are moving with the times and now also collect electronic media such as Videos (which are now on the way out as the machines to watch them become obsolete, but the trusty book is still very much to hand),CDs, DVDs, and academic libraries in particular,have electronic books in their catalogues.

Personally, I think I will stick with the printed word for now and watch developments while continuing to collect information about CE regardless of its format.

Please write as well as speak

There have been quite a few Conductive Education conferences over the years and the library here has a collection of proceedings from the 1980s. With the advent of computers and the spread of the Power Point presentation programme, the writing up of presentations and publication of these in proceedings seems to have diminished considerably. Selections from the World Congresses have appeared in the Conductive Education Occasional Papers published by the Peto Institute, but there has been very little else.

A number of conferences are coming up and the posting of the programme for the forthcoming conference in Chicago http://www.acena.org/site6.htmon on Andrew Sutton's blog http://www.andrew-sutton.blogspot.com/ has prompted this posting.

There are five other conferences/meetings I am aware of. The Germans have one in Munich, 24-25 October, http://www.phoenix-kf.de/

CEPEG (Conductive Education Professional Education Group) has its conference on 14 March 2009 in the UK, and there is, I believe another in Belgium in May and one in Finland in June. The next CE World Congress is in Hong Kong, 2010. More details about these later.

Finding information can be very difficult, I would be happy to put notification up on this blog if organisers would like to send me details of conferences in future.

Written published material from such meetings will help the Conductive Education world in its aim to continue to establish CE as a dynamic growing profession. If you do go to a conference, please write up your presentation and send it to the library here gill@nice.ac.uk or even submit it to RACE, the online CE journal http://www.race-journal.org/. If no published proceedings are being considered then those unable to attend the conference will be able to access developments, accounts of conductive practice and philosophy etc. and gain an overview of what is happening in CE worldwide. If you attend but don't present, a report of the events would also make a useful record. If there is nothing to chronicle the contributions and outcomes the CE literature will be poorer for it.

Cerebral palsy and walking

The Scene, newsletter of The Spastics Centre, New South Wales, Australia has created a blog which this week has a very interesting, controversial entry about cerebral palsy and walking:

http://www.cpblogs.org.au/thescene/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Myths-of-cerebral-palsy-independent-walking.html&Itemid=3

This was first published in 2006 by Iona Novak, a researcher and reports the responses of adults with cerebral palsy to efforts made in their childhood to help them walk. It is suggested that the time would have been better spent helping them to have independent mobility rather than concentrating on walking

While it is natural for parents to want to do all they can to assist their child to walk independently, with the benefit of hindsight in years to come, independent mobility, not walking per se, is likely to be seen as more important. What all parents want most for their children is a happy and fulfilled life. Walking independently is not the only way to achieve this

It would be interesting to have conductors' comments on this, but as I see it the last two sentences sum up what every conductor aims to do!

Anyone for blogging?

Blogging has certainly taken off now as more and more people take the plunge and talk about their lives online, sometimes in great detail. Look at the number of hits you can get for Conductive Education (which increases daily), just do a search on Google.
>http://www.google.co.uk/blogsearch?hl=en
These informal sources can provide a wealth of information for all those interested in CE , quite often of a different sort to that found in formally published articles and books, whilst giving an opportunity to respond with comments or questions. Many of these are written by parents via cerebral palsy websites e.g. http://www.cpblogs.org.au/covering life with a cerebral palsied child and some include details of their experiences of CE with their children on short summer camps or longer sessions, amongst other family matters and activities. e.g. http://lieck3.blogspot.com/2007/11/conductive-education.html http://blog.autismaspergersandmoreohmy.com/2008/07/29/conductive-education--little-things-mean-a-lot.aspx http://biscuitlife.blogspot.com/2008/07/its-been-so-long.html
The amount of support and responses they get from strangers is quite amazing.
Conductors are beginning to record their daily experiences with groups or individuals providing insight into their work in a personal way, giving examples which help to make CE and 'how it works' somehow more real. They are talking about what they actually do rather than discussing theory and principles etc. Look at
http://www.konduktorin.blogspot.com/
http://geekconductor.blogspot.com/ and a new site written by Hungarian conductor, Laszlo
http://www.szogeczki.blogspot.com/ - soon to be in English too.
Norman Perrin has set up a conductive web via pageflakes with the aim of linking all such postings together - a mighty big task in the circumstances and is a good starting point. http://www.pageflakes.com/PacesCEO/22370788/
Andrew Sutton is also keeping us up to date on his blog http://www.andrew-sutton.blogspot.com/
by finding even more, encouraging the start of new ones and continuation of those already going.

A blast from the past

Summer is a quiet time in the library giving an opportunity to do some tidying, checking and sorting through the build up of paperwork, new additions and such like. As this has been going on throughout the organization, not just in the library, various discoveries have been made. One of these is a number of back issues of The Conductor, the quarterly newsletter/magazine produced by the Foundation 1988-1997. There are 24 issues in total. Pieces about Pető, Hári, research, Ester Cotton’s principles, development of adult and parent and child services in Birmingham, setting up the BA(Hons) Conductive Education degree and memories of those who worked with Peto are included. This is a goldmine of information recording the development of CE not just in the UK but worldwide during those years and includes news items, reports and lots of photographs. A great read for the nostalgics and historians! If anyone is interested in having copies please contact me for further details.

New search engine

A new search engine has been launched called Cuil ( pronounced ‘cool’) by people who previously worked for Google. http://www.cuil.com/
In the press release it says that it is the world’s biggest search engine, examining more pages than any other, and:

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Apparently cuil ‘is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil’.

I have done a search for Conductive Education and found the layout of hits to be in two columns and quite different to other search engines. A few of the hits have the Foundation for Conductive Education logo attached despite having nothing to do with FCE. A temporary glitch, no doubt!

Any new service is worth investigating and taking the time to familiarise oneself should show whether it is a viable option to user-friendly Google for you or another complementary engine. I find using several different search services can produce different selections.

Let me know what you think.

Feedback from the other side

The library contains all sorts of items about CE written by all sorts of people; conductors, students,academics, health professionals and those who have experienced CE themselves or have children who have. These reports are what I want to talk about today.

Experiental accounts present some of the most interesting views and perspectives on the practice from the other side, whilst debunking some of the myths about 'boot camp' or 'just exercises'.

Last week I was reminded of how powerful such reports can be when I was sent an account by Maria, a 52 year-old woman with cerebral palsy who had experienced CE for the first time as an adult despite reservations as she is keen to maintain her mobility and independence which had been affected by age.

I was very sceptical of trying this treatment as I thought how can any intervention help me now at my age, but hey, anything is worth a try to help me maintain my independence and mobility.

She goes on to say

How wrong was I? Conductive Education is very different to physiotherapy. Physiotherapy only exercises my muscles. Conductive Education teaches me many different series of tasks to help me get the most practical control over my body. It teaches me how to make may movements in a 'normal' and correct pattern and aims to replace my old habits with new. Every movement is broken into steps, which I learn to do counting a rhythm. I have also been taught to use controlled breathing which assists me in making my movements.

During the last five years I have continued with sessions of Conductive Education. My general well-being, self esteem and confidence are vastly improved. I don't feel as exhausted as I did and have more energy. I have learnt so much about cerebral palsy and now understand how my body functions.

She is just one of a number of adults to record such experiences which help to form a body of experiental affirmative literature in the absence of any academic research on CE for adults.

Parents, too have recorded their and their child's experiences of CE and talk about CE being more than just exercises. For example, in 1997, Celeste Repasky wrote

While the gross, fine motor and speech improvements are visibly apparent, our daughter's progress in the cognitive/personality realm is more subtle but equally important. After Conductive Education our daughter was more confident, and independent and had increased self-esteem.

As a result of such changes and development some parents have gone on to establish centres in their home town to enable more children to benefit from this education.

A list of accounts can be found at

http://www.conductive-education.org.uk/2008/pdfs/LIBRARY/bibliographies/CEwhatdoneforme.pdf

and parents' experiences at

http://www.conductive-education.org.uk/2008/pdfs/LIBRARY/bibliographies/Parents%20Experiences%20and%20Expectations3.pdf

Perhaps Maria should be given the last word

Conductive Education has given me my very own 'pocketful of tricks'.I carry my'pocket of tricks' with me all the time; even take them to bed with me. When ever I am struggling to do a task out come my 'pocket of tricks'. My 'pocket of tricks' are tasks combined with controlled breathing which Conductive Education has taught me.

They live with me, they never fail me.

I would be grateful if anyone who has written or has copies of such experiences could send them to me either in paper or electronic form to add to the library's collection.

References

Dalmon, M. (2008) CE for life. Unpublished paper.

Repasky, C. (1977) Conductive Education; a parent's perspective http://members.aol.com/jimceleste/cond_ed/cenews.html

News

It just shows what determined parents can do. Three mothers from central Oregon have managed to raise funds and get a conductor for a summer camp for a month in Bend, Oregon. This has resulted in a substantial report in their local newspaper, The Bulletin, looking at their efforts, their children and the CE situation in North America.

http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080703/NEWS0107/807030309&nav_category I have not seen such a long piece for quite a while and it will be interesting to see if it sparks off further interest and reporting in Oregon.

How many collections?

Recently I discovered online, the Conductive Education Resource Library catalogue of the Jockey Club Marion Fang Conductive Learning Centre, SAHK .
http://jcmfclc.spastic.org.hk/Library_Catalog.doc
This lists a substantial amount of material on CE and associated subjects held by SAHK (previously the Spastics Association of Hong Kong), some of which -I think! - is new to me. It is hard to be sure as details of some items are basic, but I hope to follow up on these. Up until then I was only aware of two libraries (at the Peto Institute and the Foundation for Conductive Education) with collections of a reasonable size. The published literature of CE is small (but growing) and unpublished items far outweigh these in number, therefore it is very difficult to keep track,obtain copies and raise awareness of ALL that there is.
Are there any other collections whose contents lists are so freely available? Are there any other organisations or even individuals starting or hoping to start a library?The two libraries I mention are not so accessible because one catalogue is up on a Hungarian language website http://libsrv.peto.hu/F and the other, the National Library of Conductive Education catalogue is not available on the internet. Perhaps there could be a way of working together to share what we have.
I hope to post here lists of new additions to the National Library regularly to keep people up to date.

Conductive Education in the News

Conductive Education does not feature very often in the news in either a big or small way, but I do a trawl of the internet almost daily to see what has been reported and add items to my extensive collection of cuttings from the media that go back to the 1960s. The instant availablility via the internet of items in newspapers and periodicals all over the world has been a great benefit to keeping up to date.

Over this last week CE has featured as a side issue to the award of what is thought to be the largest compensation payment by a hospital trust in the UK, resulting in 14 articles picked up by Google. After errors by hospital staff at the birth of Owen Johnson in 1999 he was left severely disabled with cerebral palsy and has now been awarded £8 million. Owen has attended the National Institute of Conductive Education and made good progress as mentioned by

http://www.expressandstar.com/2008/07/01/8m-for-boy-left-disabled/

http://www.birminghampost.net/news/west-midlands-health-news/2008/07/01/8-million-payout-for-dudley-boy-disabled-by-medical-failure-65233-21212564/

and not just the regional papers covered this:

http://www.legal-medical.co.uk/news/11910.html

http://itn.co.uk/news/ec810395d218c3d18d8c45ea79507247.html

The regional TV programme Midlands Today report can be seen at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7484431.stm

Other items include a community award to a centre in Leicestershire

http://www.loughboroughecho.net/news/loughborough-news/2008/07/03/community-award-winners-revealed-73871-21220948/

A fundraising effort to send a child to centre in County Durham

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/39I39ll-get-my-skates-on.4242263.jp

A centre in New York, Standing Tall has been named as a charity partner for the NY marathon by NIKE

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/06-19-2008/0004835336&EDATE=

Not all search engines produce the same results so its worth checking others such as Acoona

http://www.accoona.com/search?col=mc&expw=1&expb=0&expn=0&pg=1&order=0&qt=%22conductive+education%22

and Yahoo http://uk.news.yahoo.com/

and it is possible to set up an alert to your email in-box from some search engines, e.g. Yahoo, Google when items are posted or even blog postings from Google!

Conference in Chicago

I'm not sure yet what my parameters are for information put up on this blog, but today I'm including a link to ACENA's website which has now posted details of its conference in August.

http://www.acena.org/site6.htm

If anyone knows of any other conferences, seminars etc, please let me know.

More information

In response to my last posting, Norman has asked for a reference to the Education Bill currently going through the UK parliament as mentioned by Baroness Warnock. After searching ( no reference was given in the Special Children article) I have found several Bills currently going through the House of Commons: one on special educational needs information, one on education and skills and one on the education of children with autism. These can be found at

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2007-08/specialeducationalneedsinformation.html///

and

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/publications/educationandskills/ with a collection of associated documents including a brief summary.

and

http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2007-08/educationchildrenwithautism.html

A full list of bills can be found at http://services.parliament.uk/bills/

I hope this helps.

Interesting opinion and statistics

This week I have found two items of interest to those in the field of CE in journals/magazines taken by the National Library of Conductive Education.

In the latest isue of Special Children there is a report of a presentation made by Baroness Warnock to the 5th Annual SENCO Update Conference held in London, May 2008. She gave an overview of the report produced by the inquiry she chaired in 1978 and then states that the statement of need "devised really in order to protect the interests of the most severely handicapped" turned into "what the local authority thought it could afford. So right at the beginning the statement failed". She also expressed concern that in the new education bill going through parliament at the moment " the obligation of the local authority to inform parents of special schools that are available has been whittled down, and now, if the bill goes through, they have no duty, for example to inform parents of the existence of suitable independent schools"

Read the full article in Special Children, June/July 2008 , pp.14- 17.

A small piece in Cerebral Palsy Magazine, an American publication caught my eye. The prevalence of cerebral palsy has increased according to a new study by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which shows that about 1 in 278 children have cerebral palsy higher than the previously accepted 1 in 666 children.

Cerebral Palsy Magazine, June 2008, p6.