Month: June 2015

Rainbow Centre 25th Anniversary

Gillian Maguire Leave a comment

Conductive Education centres are popping up all the time and quite a few seem to pop down again fairly quickly, not having the necessary ingredients to keep going, so its good to hear when one has real staying power. The Rainbow Centre, Fareham, UK has just celebrated its 25th anniversary.

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/health/local-health/rainbow-centre-in-fareham-marks-25th-birthday-1-6822136

This is certainly good news especially as this time last year it was very near closure due to lack of funds, but managed to raise the required amount in time and turn things around.

Good luck  to those involved for the future – keep up the good work!

Research into Conductive Education services in South Africa

Gillian Maguire 1 Comment

Another Alert from Google about a masters’ thesis completed in 2015 has reminded me about an ongoing project in South Africa.

In September 2003 after an initial investigation into the needs of the Sizanani Children’s Home in South Africa, Conductive Education was introduced in two phases and by 2005 was available to all the children,  and as far as I know it is still part of the work there.

Since then there have been a number of publications and student research reports about this project.

Publications

Vermeer, A, et al (2006) Effects of Conductive Education in a home for children with developmental disabilities. Recent Advances in Conductive Education, 4(2), pp.9-20.

Vermeer, A.  and  Templeman, H. eds. (2006) Health Care in Rural South Africa: an innovative approach. Amsterdam: VU University Press,  (pp. 132-146)

Magyarszeky, Z. and Vermeer, A. eds. (2014) Disability Care in Africa: Community-Based Rehabilitation in Rural Regions. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit

Postgraduate studies

Six theses  have been submitted to the University of Utrecht for Masters degrees,  2010 – 2015.

2010

Mathot, A. The evaluation of the Conductive Education program and the Cognitive Stimulation program in a home for children with developmental disabilities in a rural area of South Africa.Masters. University of Utrecht, Netherlands

http://bit.ly/RWI9ts

Vos, R.V. and Westrhenen, N. van  The evaluation of the Conductive Education program and the implementation of a Cognitive Stimulation program in a home for children with developmental disabilities in a rural area of South Africa. Masters. University of Utrecht, Netherlands.

http://bit.ly/1koNpkY

Velzen, J.M. and van Mathot, A.F. The evaluation of the Conductive Education program and the Cognitive Stimulation program in a home for children with developmental disabilities in a rural area in South Africa.   Masters. University of Utrecht, Netherlands.

http://bit.ly/1gXlrxo

2011

Flesch, Kathrin. Evaluation of a cognitive play intervention in children with profound multiple disabilities at a children’s home in South Africa.  Masters. University of Utrecht, Netherlands

http://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/279060

 2012

Twilhaar, S. Evaluation of a Conductive Education intervention for children with profound multiple disabilities in a residential children’s home in South Africa.  Masters. University of Utrecht, Netherlands.

http://bit.ly/1mIuMqE

2015

Spek, A. An Evaluation of Conductive Education for Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders in a Residential Home in South Africa.  Masters. University of Utrecht, Netherlands

http://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/313617

 

This is quite usual in other fields, but unusual in Conductive  Education. As far as I know, it has been a long time since a number of studies  came out of the same project.

 

 

Copyright ignored again?

Gillian Maguire 3 Comments

Yesterday I received a Google Alert for Conductive Education which appears to be a video produced by the Foundation for Conductive Education.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2uki87

Over the years a number of such promotional films were made and if I remember those correctly this particular upload seems to be a bit of a cut and paste job from more than one.  There is no mention of any production date that I can find.

This film was uploaded by ‘Pearley Franc’ and  on going to the home page of the website I can find no information about this person just links to other films that have been uploaded. None of these appear to have any link with Conductive Education and I can find no Pearley Franc on Facebook .

The website dailymotion.com  appears to be a facility that you can join up to and use to upload videos of your choice and is based in Paris.

http://www.dailymotion.com/gb/about

Perhaps the Foundation knows about this and has given permission to use its films but there is no mention or acknowledgment to say so.

Copyright is something which seems to get ignored on the Internet as many people appear to think that anything published on the Web is up for grabs and  are happy to cut and paste to their hearts content from websites, documents and films. Perhaps those who hold copyright to their material should try and monitor it a bit more and at the very least require acknowledgment of their work.

Update on new online service

Gillian Maguire 1 Comment

Last week I posted about the new online service

http://e-conduction.org/ceinformation/new-online-information-service-goes-live-today/

from Special Needs Jungle for obtaining copies of journal articles not yet free on the Internet.

http://www.specialneedsjungle.com/patientinform-snj/patientinform-send-medical-research/

I applied for an article and received a very nice email back  stating that my request had been forwarded to the publisher and I should hear in about six days or so.

Today I checked my email and found I had been sent a reply last night. The article was now available for me via the Special needs Jungle website where I was to follow the link given.

I did this and found the report by Ester Cotton on a study visit to the Institute for Movement Therapy and School for Conductors, published in 1965, was now available to me in a pdf format. Terrific service from an organisation staffed by volunteers!

I was also told :

Please do pass on this service to your colleagues and friends and feel free to share the research using this link:  http://bit.ly/snjPI1

All items requested in this way will be available to those who access the Special Needs Jungle website. This is the first,  and I am sure others will follow.  In fact, I have several I will ask for myself and I will check the list regularly to see what is on it relevant to Conductive Education.

Please remember that not every request may be granted, but do try it out.

New online information service goes live today

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Yesterday a posting on Andrew Sutton’s blog drew my attention to a new information service which looks to be very useful to those looking for particular items not available online.

http://www.conductive-world.info/2015/05/excellent-new-online-resource.html

Special Needs Jungle were offering to help access journal articles via Patient INFORM:

So, you’ve found a medical article or research study that’s behind a paywall?

Well, submit the details as indicated below and we will see if we can get it released.

http://www.specialneedsjungle.com/request-an-article-via-patientinform/

This service started today and I have joined up and submitted a request for an article from Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology.  The form  supplied  asks for author, title, journal, date and the URL of the article on the Internet. 

Special Needs Jungle have responded with an email saying: 

Thanks for using our patientINFORM article request system.

This confirms that your request has been received.

We’ll email you when we hear back if that article is available to be accessed  (not all are) and we’ll send you the link.

I will now wait for further news which may take up to six days. 

On further investigation I discovered that PatientINFORM  works with medical journals only, which  may limit its usefulness re items on Conductive Education.  A   list of the publishers and journals  involved are on its website at

http://www.patientinform.org/participating-journals-alpha/

For the past five years I have been compiling the Virtual Library catalogue of items relevant to Conductive Education that are  freely available online either in full or just an abstract, and also those that need payment .

http://e-conduction.org/virtual-library-new/

This new service  is available to individuals only.

The resulting information can be printed off but  cannot be circulated to others in any way ( for copyright reasons, I assume).

 I hope that it can complement my catalogue nicely.