Changing Lives with Learning Disabilities the results are in

The door flings open, H swirls into the room bright, bubbly and with a loud, excited exclamation “This is for you” and a little bundle of handmade sugary, sweetness is pushed into my hand. “Then this is for J, this ones for E and this ones for Lisa-Marie.” It’s nearly the last session of the year for this group of our Arrowsmith participants and they’re excited for Christmas and all the end of year festivities. It’s so precious to be included in their lives like this, many of these young people have been through a lot in their lives.

We’re just as excited as the young people, not that holidays are nearly here, but for a very different reason, we’ve just received the results from their Achievement & Cognitive Assessments and this may be for the first time in some of these young people’s lives that they will get a report at the end of the year that shows significant improvement. Better yet, this type of improvement is not momentary but a strengthening and development of their brains that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, helping them achieve much more than perhaps was available to them through mainstream pathways.

This year we commenced a Pilot Program, generously funded by Olive Road, inviting 10 individuals to participate at no cost (some private schools charge $15,000 - $20,000 per year to participate) within the Arrowsmith Program. We focused on just one aspect of the program, Symbol Relations (also known as the Cognitive Enhancement Program) it’s like connecting pieces of the puzzle. A difficulty in this area often presents itself with struggles in;

* comprehension

* logical reasoning

* focus/stay on task

* understanding mathematical, scientific or literary concepts

* flexibility of thought

* reading a clock

* can appear stubborn or inflexible

* low working memory

* slow processing speed

* trouble with cause and effect relationships eg why things happen

Grammar and reading comprehension suffer because the relationships between elements or characters are not understood. For many with this dysfunction, there is a constant sense of uncertainty about whether the intended meaning (while reading or listening) has been correctly understood. All participants commenced their journey this year in this area, there’s 7 levels to progress through and can take on average 2 years to complete (although every individual is different)

As I reflect on the development we have seen in our young people and process the data that has been delivered through these assessments from the beginning of the year to today, these young people should be incredibly proud of where their hard work and commitment, as well as that of their parents and guardians, has them today. Let me share a little with you;

One participant has moved positively in several areas. In Brief Achievement (brief overview of skill development across the reading, writing and maths areas. Including measures of oral sight-word reading skill, reasoning with maths story problems and spelling ability) initially tested less than 0.1 in the National Percentile Rank (NPR) their ranking compared to all other people tested in these tests nationally, shifted to 56. In Visual-Auditory Learning (ability to learn, store and retrieve visual-auditory associations) initially tested 23 in the NPR to 94, that’s an advanced level! They have other changes too.

But what does that mean in real life for this young person? In their place of work often when confronted with a difficult situation, especially when maths was involved or being asked questions, they would mentally freeze, often no audible communication just visually appearing distressed or even blank. Dealing with customers, this was not ideal for either the young person or the customer and tears would usually ensue, with the young person feeling very low self confidence and thinking they’d made terrible mistakes.

Recently, I witnessed this same young person facing a challenge with a customer and their purchase, so maths problem and multiple factors, queue of customers, transacting customer with incorrect charge was involved. Help was ready to jump in, but for the first time I saw them, stop, look at the customer and say “Wait, sorry sometimes I get confused but I can work this out, please bear with me” and you know what, they did exactly that. The situation was resolved with the young persons solution, the customer accepted the situation and was happy with the outcome, the other customers waited and were then served. No tears, no negative impact to confidence….so precious.

Another participant initially tested less than 0.1 in the NPR for Broad Reading (measure of reading achievement, including oral sight-word reading skill, silent reading comprehension speed and the ability to comprehend passages while reading silently) after 9 months increased to 30 NPR. Reading Fluency (combined measure of oral reading skills and the ability to quickly read and comprehend sentences silently) was 0.3 NPR intially to 40 NPR. Cognitive Efficiency (measure of two aspects of information processing: letter-pattern matching speed and working memory capacity) initially 29 NPR to 65 NPR. Visual Auditory Learning (ability to learn, store and retrieve visual auditory associations) initially 48 NPR to 82 NPR!!

Again what does this mean in real life for this young person? This young person like many of our participants have experienced significant trauma and as a result usually reacts to change, challenge or frustration with sever anger and outbursts. So during sessions it was not uncommon to have a melt down when faced with challenge, which literally was every session, this program is designed to be hard for a reason, once you seem to be getting somewhere it switches and gets to another level which is hard again. It stretches and builds cognitive function within the brain that’s no easy task.

I witnessed this young person having a really challenging session, their face was red, they were intently focused and their posture just screamed “Meltdown Coming”. It was break time so they were told to have a break, which normally would have illicited a quick exit from the room. Not this time, still focused on the program, they said “No, not yet I’ve nearly got this, I know I can do it, I’ll take my break later”. What a turn around, they recognised that whilst it was hard, they’ve been here before and they have succeeded and will again, just had to push through, no meltdown.

There’s more I could share on growth but you get the idea, this program really does impact lives. We started this Pilot Program year with 10 participants. It takes commitment from the individual but also their family, they spend two hours twice a week after school in our centre at 90 St John Street. For one parent they had 4 children in the program so that was 4 nights a week after school coming into our offices and waiting not to mention extra petrol costs. For a few participants and parents this was too much for them, sadly, we had 2 drop away throughout the year and another just before the end, now was not the right time for them, but the door is still open for the future.

As mentioned earlier, we focused on the Symbols Relations program, which has 7 levels to it. Of our remaining 7 participants we ended the year with 1 on 2nd level, 2 on 3rd level, 2 on 4th Level and 2 on 5th level. Everyone is different for example the student that is now on the 2nd level had to learn to count before they started, so they put in a lot of work to just build a foundation to even commence the program! To get to the 2nd level is a massive achievement for this young person and their counting and interest in numbers is next level now!

At the beginning of Term 4 we held a Student v’s Parent session. The parents were invited to join with their children and the child would teach their parent how the program worked. They’d have practise time with their child tutoring them and then they would pitch against each other in timed intervals. How lovely was this day! The students were so patient with their parents, some students showed complete strangers how it worked. I observed one of our very challenging students patiently explaining the process and being so gentle with their explanations (why couldn’t they be like that all the time:) and forgiving of errors and questions.

The competition was very fierce though, the students showed off their superpowers and their parents were genuinely impressed with how far they had come and the level of difficulty their children were working at. They had not seen this before in them, they had only ever seen hardship, difficulty and struggle with learning. Of course the Students won and the losers were excited to have lost (well most of them anyway). We then shared a delicious lunch of Burger Junkie burgers and chips to celebrate.

We are looking forward to next year and working with parents to decide if their children will continue next year. We truly hope they do as they are so close to finish this area and the change to their brains will be permanent and life changing in these areas. Two placements within the fully funded positions have already been filled, there’s one placement left to fill. We also had a new participant join outside the Pilot group within the year, utilising their Capacity Building area of their self-managed NDIS funding.

This year we are also opening to participants outside the Pilot Program. Our model for this program is to be self-funding so that those that can afford to pay for their place within the program personally or via NDIS (at affordable levels not Private School levels) the funds will cover students that have no ability to pay for inclusion once our funding ends. Arrowsmith can help many areas of learning disabilities including dyslexia and it’s available for any age too. We’ve spoken mainly about young people but we have two adults in our program now. Teen Challenge Queensland operates this program within their residential rehab program with adults that have impact to their brains from substance abuse, they even have a 70+ year old who has experienced issues after having a stroke. If you have any questions or would like to know more then please reach out to us via our website.