Offering Individual Support
Each person’s strengths and weaknesses vary depending upon their preferences, their difficulties and personality. Alison has experience and training to support the range of difficulties: dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysgraphia, AD(H)D and autism. There are a range of neurodiversities that commonly overlap.
A
lison’s aim is always to encourage the people that she works with to develop their full potential. She does this by helping them to develop ways of working which draw on their strengths.
In education, students need to develop their study skills to achieve a constantly increasing level of study. Alison has experience of working with children through to mature students and has supported over 100 students, some for several years, others for short periods to get them over a hurdle.
Children
Working with children is particularly helpful when they have gone through intensive phonological intervention and need more support. Alison has trained to become a specialist in using a morphological approach to help children to understand how words work, learning to break words down into their constituent parts using meaning, instead of sound.
Teenagers
Teenagers often need support to develop skills in preparation for examinations. They might have been told how to revise but the methods have not worked for them and they need help to develop strategies to enable them to learn the material and represent what they have learnt on a page or computer.
Students
Students are often diagnosed whilst they are at university: their difficulties can sometimes be masked whilst at school but the strategies that they have developed previously do no work at university. Students who have been diagnosed whilst at school and have developed strategies often need to hep to take their strategies to the next stage whilst at university. Most students can apply for Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) https://www.gov.uk/disabled-students-allowance-dsa whilst at university and Alison can support them as a ‘Non-Medical Helper’.
Mature Students
Alison has worked extensively with mature students, particularly with people who are training to be ordained in the Church of England and Methodist denominations, as well as doctors in training. This has included supporting them during their courses and afterwards when they have taken up permanent positions.
Adults in Employment
In employment, adults need support to develop their strategies to complete their work role. Alison has worked with several organisations to enable their staff to flourish, often as they change roles or gain a promotion, which can sometimes lead to difficulties that require new strategies.
Dyslexia and Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD) are categorised as a disability. This means that under the 2010 Equality Act, an employee should be protected against discrimination and an employer has a duty to make “reasonable adjustments” that will in help an employee to do their job well. For example, allowing an employee to use headphones to block out background noise, or the use of speech-to-text software, so that they can hear text, rather than just read it. Failure of an employer to provide reasonable adjustments can lead to potentially unlimited compensation being awarded by an employment tribunal.
Alison is based in Birmingham and sees clients from various walks of life who are privately funded or funded through an organisation, such as Disabled Student’s 
Allowance (DSA), their training provider or their employer.
Over many years, Alison has worked with doctors in training to help them succeed in their employment and their examinations.
She has also worked with many adults who are training for ordination and who are ordained and need support in their roles in the Church of England and Methodist churches.
