Test your strengths and weaknesses online

Well, it’s taken about four years - and some people think I am impatient! For a long time I have been wanting a screening tool that teachers and parents could use at either at school or at home which would quickly identify both the strengths and weakness of a child that is displaying learning, attention or behavioural symptoms. Often it is impossible to get hold of an Educational Psychologist or other expert to quickly identify such issues - so Sheffield University have kindly come up with an on-line screening test which is a very good starter to see and insight into a child’s potential.

It is so often the case the children (or adults for that matter) displaying some of the symptoms often make people obsessed with the negative side of the symptoms. This screening tool does exactly the opposite - it starts focusing on the strengths. Now every teacher and parent knows that virtually every child that has reading, attention or other symptoms often has a very creative or otherwise “intelligent” side that doesn’t often manifest itself in academic work. This screening test (which we have called ACE) is intended to do just that.

Developed and thoroughly tested by Professor Rod Nicolson from Sheffield University it is now on our web site as a beta tool. Every bit of feedback that we get from you is built into adjustments and improvements, - our long term tool is to get a very powerful, very user-friendly tool that puts useful information into the hands of parents and teachers. So - what does it do? It tells you all the strengths and skills already developed. It tells you the areas where future potential is possible and needed. It tells you what is probably the preferred learning style and then goes on to give very useful suggestions about things you can do about it. Is it a full Educational Psychologists Report? Absolutely not -but it is, I believe, better than anything else out there to give a very quick insight, based upon what we can read of the neurology from the tests that are done. So - it is all on line - go to our web site to have a look - http://www.dore.co.uk/ , kids seem to like it, because it has been cleverly written as a bunch of computer games.

And don’t forget - we want all your feedback, comments, criticisms, observations, cynical remarks - whatever, so we can learn and improve it and make it even more useful for you.

Ups and downs

My day started off great - thanks to Matt’s Mum who sent me a picture of him riding his bike - that obviously means so much to him, another one of those things that most of us take for granted but for a child like Matt it was devastating when he couldn’t do it, and a wonderful experience now he can.

However the day went down hill a bit from then. I am spitting chips. The Research Director of a well known dyslexia association was attacking me on radio for having questionable research. I had to bite my tongue from pointing out that the whole dyslexia industry has resisted my attempts to have proper benchmarking - and why? The reason is that we have done an enormous amount of research, peer reviewed research (the most authoritative and independent there is) whilst some organisations in the industry hide whatever research they have in case anyone realizes that there are many things on the market today that just do not pass scrutiny.
It is long overdue that there is proper benchmarking for every produce or service that is offered to those with learning or attention issues. These people have suffered enough. The last thing they want is to be sold products that have negligible benefits.

Another thing we should start insisting on is that anyone who criticises someone else’s product should declare their vested interest. So many critics out there pretend to be independent researchers when, in fact, much of their research is paid for by drug companies or other organisations who are selling commercial products. Proper benchmarking will solve this and we will get it implemented one day - and that will not be a day to soon!

The good news is the day has just got better again - I met a wonderful family in South Africa a few months ago, their daughter had been suicidal - just like my own daughter Susie. I have been following her progress weekly, and there were a lot of ups and downs believe me so I have remained worried. However today the news is fantastic. She is in a new college, getting great results and seems wonderfully happy for the first time in many years.

Another mercurial day ………….

Warts and all......

Oops! Someone’s already contacted me to say why haven’t I asked for Dore client stories - of all types - those for whom Dore worked brilliantly (as it so often does - thankfully!) and those for whom Dore didn’t work as well - let’s have them all “out on the table”.

Another set of ideas that could come out is “How to increase motivation to do an exercise programme twice a day for a year”. There are some excellent, funny ideas out there - some involve parental bribery - and vice versa!. I can see that this is going to be a lot of fun - a chance to share with everyone all the excitement that goes on as people’s lives are changed in a way they never thought possible before.

But it’s not going to be all good news - there’s going to be “warts and all”.

Welcome.....

Well this is my first blog and I want to tell you why I feel communicating like this is useful.
There are so many people suffering with so many issues needless today that it is overdue that the full truth is out there. So much is talked about that is simply nonsense that we want to demystify all the breakthroughs that we are now getting to grips with in science and share everything with anybody who wants to learn more.

As an organisation, Dore istotally open, our staff are wonderfully motivated and sincere in every way - hopefully that will quickly become obvious as this blog develops.

Personally it infuriates me that there are some critics out there who, quite frankly, have not taken the time to look at the science. The trouble is that they are stopping those who would otherwise get help from accessing it - this is serious! This blog, hopefully, will change that quickly as people ask for straight forward questions and get full and direct answers.

So send your comments, questions and points of view - I look forward to sharing with you everything.