C.E. Jottings

Unlike me, they would not love her

"Unlike me, they would not love her", so said Janet Cameron, in April 2006, rejecting the option of her 24-year old daughter being in permanent care. "One day, we may have to accept that Sophie would be better off living elsewhere, that we can no longer manage. But I will feel that I have failed her again." For a year, Janet had been writing in the Guardian of being a carer for her daughter. It is evident that being Sophie's... Read more →

Proposing a special school as a Free School

As those readers will know who have been following Paces' proposal to set up a Free School, we submitted our Proposal in August 2010. progress since then has been a little slow. The explanation is apparently the policy issues surrounding special education. We believe that maybe 11 proposals were submitted to set up special schools as Free Schools. The situation as we now understand it is that the Department for Education (DfE) is currently reviewing its process and creating a... Read more →

50 minutes with Lars Mullback - inspiration

At 50 minutes, "Yes, you can" is a long film but every minute an inspiration. Thanks Lars for making available a version with English sub-titles. Thanks to Andrew Sutton and Susie Mallett for the alerts. My simple message is this: Watch it - all the way through. Read more →

Mzee Peter Chiera - a personal, non-CE, quest

Who were the two visitors who read my post "Peter Chiera - a great Kenyan"? The Live Traffic Feed that you can see on my blog records visitors from Accra, Ghana and Nairobi, Kenya in the past 2 hours. Dear visitors, if you read this and knew Peter Chiera, please email me. The contact is beneath my picture on this blog here. Or, go to the Mzee Peter Chiera wiki, where you can leave comments. Thank you. Read more →

Julie Evett wrote to her local MP and to David Cameron

You can find Julie on Facebook. She's a campaigning Mum of 4-year old Rose who more than once has made national headlines. Her personal story was one of those featured in the November 2009 documentary "When a Mother's Love is Not Enough", Rosa Monckton's film about the pressures on parents of children with disabilities. Julie has now written to her local MP, Nick Harvey, and to David Cameron. She has kindly allowed me to copy them here. Unfortunately, I can't... Read more →

A virtual conductive education free school? (US Charter School model) #CondEd

Anyone care to join me in thinking through a proposal for a virtual conductive education free school? A what? Yes. "A virtual conductive education free school". I was reading there are 35 virtual charter schools in 25 states in America. So why not a virtual Free School for children with cerebral palsy? Can't be done? Who says? Read more →

Not taking the negative view

@vscuts on twitter and the Voluntary Sector Cuts website must be almost compulsory reading for anyone in the sector. It does not make heartening reading for anyone who cares about the clients of the services these organisations will no longer be providing. A couple of days ago I wrote a post "Taking the Negative View". Why is there not a website - is there such a website? - where I can read of creative actions being taken by charities and... Read more →

"Francis Maude vows to unlock £78b in charitable assets for Big Society" http://bit.ly/hyXF0e Read more →

Being enterprising ... Talking Enterprise

I've mentioned Mike Chitty on this blog a number of times. His approach to community development is one that for me resonates with conductive education work with adults or rather how such programmes might be developed, as we have some way to go. Located in "assets" not "needs", focusing firmly on the individual rather than "community" or "business skills", with an emphasis on "being enterprising" and "becoming", Mike's take on development is about people having "active agency in their own... Read more →

Taking the negative view

A few weeks ago we had an assessment to do with our daughter Sarah's respite funding and allocation. It was obvious that we needed to emphasise what Sarah could not do. Ten days or so later, we still felt the impact of that couple of unrelenting hours - it felt like when we looked at Sarah we saw a person who could not rather than the person we love who can. Today I heard about and visited a new website... Read more →