As I was writing the most recent posting to this blog, a distant echo was tickling my memory of something said by Andrew Sutton, former Director of the National Institute for Conductive Education in Birmingham, England.
This afternoon I located the source of the tickle in a paper (unpublished, I believe, but available I expect from the National Institute Library or here: Download 2005.03 IM Conference ECM.pdf), based upon an informal presentation Andrew made to the conference "Children’s Trusts: Transforming Futures" held at the Institute of Directors, Pall Mall, London, on 10th March 2005, co-hosted by Paces and the National Institute and sponsored by Irwin Mitchell. The paper is entitled "Joining up to the ‘joined up’ agenda: What can the conductive movement offer the joined-up children’s agenda?"
Andrew states, correctly, as every Conductor would agree: "Children with difficulties of movement experience difficulties in integrating their experiences and what they learn from them into a harmonious whole."
He then asserts, again correctly, the importance of specialist assistance: "the experience and learning of children with motor disorders and their families may remain fragmented, difficult or impossible for them and their parents to fit together as do their non-disabled peers without specialist help".
So far so good. Perhaps not many would find either of these two preceding statements contentious. But then this, a statement worth taking our time over, having read once, to read again and read slowly: "But what specialist help do we presently provide (not just in the United Kingdom, but in most developed countries)? Not a service designed a priori and systemically to match their particular developmental needs but an ad hoc assembly of different professional structures, each developed originally for other purposes and each delivered by different professionals working to the requirements of their own philosophies, timetables and priorities."
If we are in any doubt, Andrew follows on, saying: "Even were everything that these professionals do within their own professional roles specifically geared to advancing the child’s development and the family’s functioning, even were all these professionals working towards common goals according to a common theoretical understanding, then the children and their families would still be confronted
with services that themselves constitute a fragmented and disharmonious experience." (The emphases are mine.)
Since the dominating introduction of the Every Child Matters agenda into UK public services for children and young people, and the consequent restructuring of public education, health and care services to encourage "joined up working" (ie integration and harmony) between the previously disparate professionals involved, we have heard much - as much in Sheffield as elsewhere in the UK - of "multidisciplinary" service delivery teams, and behind them "multi-disciplinary" service planning panels. It is an observation so simple as to be self-evident that the first and most difficult task of such "multi-disciplinary" teams is to weld themselves into an integrated and harmonious whole: a task, I suspect, and as Andrew implies, to be impossible, and that even were it possible, such a service would still be experienced by parents and their children as "fragmented and disharmonious".
I have already observed that I have become very aware at this 6th World Congress of Conductive Education, how many more, including Conductors, seem to be working in "multi-disciplinary" or "trans-disciplinary" teams. We can dispute whether or not this is a "good thing". That is not my purpose here. My purpose here is to follow Andrew's thoughts in his 2005 paper and contrast the multi- or trans-disciplinary models with the model offered by Conductive Education, in which "... children’s development and their families’ desire to enhance this are served by a single professional worker, the ‘conductor’, who teaches and advises on the totality of the child’s upbringing and education, through a unitary theoretical perspective channeled at given points in a child’s learning through a single professional." He continues: "Conductive Education’s practical and theoretical contribution present aspirations for joined-up services as a service model specifically designed to respond to a specified range of human issues, and provided predominantly through the uni-disciplinary agency of a ‘conductor’ of development, who can of course, consult, link to, call in and mediate with other professionals should specific need arise." (My emphases).
To counter the reality of continuing 'fragmentation and disharmony', Andrew offers a solution: "From this perspective, the next obvious step for serious consideration is provision of professionals and professional services specifically designed for specific jobs, not jobs for already existing professionals and already existing professional structures." For this, Conductive Education offers one possible - tested and effective - model of a unified, uni-professional approach.
"So what then is this model? It comprises a unitary service provided for a coherent, definable range of developmental problems, staffed and oriented through common training, goals and values; it offers a one-stop reference point for children and adults with movement disabilities across the life-span, and their families yet remains able to call in and mediate with other professions and agencies. In service and in training Conductive Education manifests a unity of philosophy, methods and organisation directed to effecting change in development and function."
Finally, Andrew points to a remarkable (to me anyway) historical precedent. Now nearly 40 years ago, in 1970, the influential Younghusband Report, concluded its chapter on the training, supply and employment of staff by making 4 observations on improving practice, three of which were essentially seeking to improve the functioning of "multi-disciplinary collaboration"; the fourth was different and new, a call for 'hybrid' training, for which Younghusband's model was conductive education:
"Unfortunately it often happens that a spastic child, for example, has to leave his classroom on
successive occasions to receive speech therapy, physiotherapy or occupational therapy. Many
workers in these professions recognise that there is something unsatisfactory in this situation.
We have been interested to learn of experiments being carried out in this country on the Peto method of treating cerebral palsied children, which originated in Hungary. In this method, called ‘conductive education’ physical training, social training, speech therapy and education are carried out by the same person, who naturally has to receive a long course of training." (My emphasis).
From Younghusband's 'hybrid' training, it is a short logical next step to a 'hybrid' or uni-professional; a sub-specialism of whom would work with children with motor disorders. We might call them "Conductors".
