Getting Started

Inspired by my sister who has just started her own blog I felt compelled to write my own views and news.

I have just heard of a young dyslexic woman (19 yrs old), who, trying to get into employment through one of the government schemes undertook a basic literacy skills assessment. Rather naievely, she copied her answers from the person sitting close to her. She scraped through and was accepted onto the scheme. She was recommended for basic literacy skills training and went along to register for the classes. During the registration process it was discovered that her basic literacy skills were so poor and that this was probably due to the fact that she had dyslexia. The basic skills tutor tried to find an appropriate route for this young woman to gain the help needed to boost her literacy skills.

The fact is if your are 16 years plus and have poor literacy skills the chances of you getting appropriate help is really impossible because basic skills tutors, generally, are not trained to teach dyslexic individuals - this is a specialist skill.

The tutor used her tenacity to seek help for this young woman through all of the agencies that she could think of. Not surprisingly she drew a blank. The tutor then rang me as I had been involved with her agency in assessing a course on dyslexia awareness and the tutor thought that I would be able to suggest or sign post to where help would be available. I did what I could but the fact of the matter is that this kind of help is not available through the channels that you would expect. At best, if she is lucky, the local dyslexia association (LDA) will provide help and support from their own limited resources. LDA's are charities usually set up by dyslexic people having faced similar problems. They get no recognition for the work that they do and survive on a shoe string. Yet they support some of the most disadvantaged people in the UK.

It astonishes me to think that there is no appropriate provision available for dyslexic adults who want to improve their literacy skills. This state of affairs is totally unacceptable because in the end all tax payers bear the cost of supporting these individuals through one form of state benefit or other. The individuals themselves have no choice in the matter. They simply have nowhere to go to learn the skills they need to get into employment.

The Government, in spite of all its promises to get people off of benefits, fail to put appropriate resources into helping dyslexic people who for whatever reason have poor or no literacy skills. Dyslexic people are failed over and over again. They failed through the education system where there dyslexia is not picked up in the first place and then failed again when they take steps to do something about it in later life.

The British Dyslexia Association have a National Helpline which receives countless calls from just such dyslexic individuals. Many of them desperate to learn how to read and write and desperate to find work. Time and again the adult education system channel them into English for Speakers of Other Language (ESOL) classes as they have nowhere better for them to go.

Dyslexia occurs irrespective of intelligence so you can't assume that all of these people are without wit. Dyslexia is a mix of ability and difficulties, it affects ones underlying ability to learn but with the right teaching strategies the barriers to learning can be overcome.

The waste of human potential is huge and the cost to the country must run into billions of pounds.

I meet these people on a regular basis, everyone has their own depressing story, and sadly I am not able to give them much hope of things changing any time soon.

The Government is just beginning to wake up to the fact that if children leave primary school without functional reading the chances of them boosting these skills or gaining any qualifications at secondary school are pretty slim. When will the government wake up to the fact that these are the unemployed of the future and a good deal of them will end up in the criminal justice system where they are already over represented?