Local Association Board Case Studies
Contents
Fay Dutton - East of England Representative
Tell us a bit about yourself – whereabouts are you from, what kind of job do you do?
I'm now retired, but I worked as a Public Health Doctor in Cambridgeshire. I was the Lead for Children and Families, which included children with disabilities and people with learning disabilities, so I knew quite a lot about disability, but in fact, I knew practically nothing about dyslexia.
Before that, I spent the first half of my career overseas working mainly with Charities - I have quite a professional background in Public Health really. This knowledge has been useful to have in my role as a member of the Local Association Board, it’s good to understand the perspective of other forms of neurodiversity, especially seeing as there is so much overlap.
What’s your personal connection to dyslexia?
My personal connection has very little to do with my professional roles! My middle son started to struggle at school in Year 4, and quite by chance in my professional role I had just approved £250 for a child to have a pair of Irlen’s coloured glasses, and so I had a look at the evidence which I didn’t think it was particularly strong, but thought "well, what’s £250 if it might improve his access to reading and education?” It was a while ago and in those days money wasn’t quite such an issue.
So when my son started to struggle I decided I would take him along to the Irlen center just to exclude that as an issue, and I nearly fell off my chair when the assessor asked him to describe a poster of text behind her. He described rivers running down through the mass of text, with it all moving around, and I was just stunned. When she gave him these coloured glasses it stopped moving around, and he stopped fidgeting. And so to cut a long story short, he ended up being diagnosed with dyslexia, and I started to learn more about dyslexia.
My eldest daughter who is a couple of years older than him we didn’t pick up until Year 13 because she could read – it didn’t cross my mind even with a very dyslexic son that she could be dyslexic too. She was doing the IB at school then and had to do an extended essay, and she found she couldn’t get what was in her head down on paper. We thought "something isn’t right here" and so we took her to a dyslexia assessor and it turned out that her reading was so slow and inaccurate that it caused a lot of stress, and that she was clearly dyslexic.
Looking back on it now, a lot of the warning signs were there earlier with her, but we hadn’t picked up on it. She had been a very poor speller, and in Year 4 we were told she may grow out of that or she may not, but she definitely wasn’t very good on spelling. She is now a teacher, but it was a real shock having picked it up in Year 13 - she then got DSA at Uni and that really helped. We then had our youngest son assessed too because his spelling was poor – so we are parents of three dyslexic children.
Lots of my family are dyslexic too – my nieces and nephews, they are also dyslexic, and I am fairly sure that I am now, which never would have crossed my mind before, but knowing what I now know I realise this. I was very slow to learn to read and still read very slowly, but actually very accurately. I'm also pretty sure that both of my brothers are dyslexic – one of them acknowledges it, and the other doesn't agree.
How did you get involved with the Local Association Board?
My husband and I both went to a Roadshow which was organised by the British Dyslexia Association, for people in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire – it must have been around 7 or so years ago. It was designed to try to resurrect the Peterborough and Cambridgeshire Dyslexia Association which didn’t have any active volunteers or anybody who wanted to run it, so the BDA was trying to revive it.
So we volunteered to be trustees of this Association, and then from there somebody suggested that I might like to join the Local Association Board because I really wanted to find out more about dyslexia. I thought that that would be a great way to find out about what other Local Associations are doing, and to help me to learn about dyslexia. So I stood for election as the East of England rep, was duly elected and joined the Local Association Board.
What does your work with the Local Association Board involve?
Well this is quite interesting because initially it seemed just a place where we talked and I learnt lots, and I felt that I could contribute because of my professional background combined with my experience as a parent, but more recently the Local Association Board has become much more effective.
I have become one of the four Local Association Board members on the BDA Trustee Board, so that has given me to opportunity to get involved on a national level, to influence policy and practice more widely, and so the Local Association Board was a really important stepping stone to that, because it allowed me to be more aware of what was going on at other Local Associations.
I suppose my main responsibility on the Local Association Board now supporting the East of England Local Dyslexia Associations representing them at the BDA Trustee Board and feeding back and sharing information with them through the Local Association Board.
It has been a really good learning experience and I have met some great people. We also have a funding pot which allows us to pass money back to some Local Associations who need a small few hundred pounds for a local project. The Local Association Board really is that connection between the BDA and what’s going on nationally, and the Local Associations. We are also trying to make sure that if a Local Association might be starting to fail that we are there to try and help them to recover and regenerate, which is something that wouldn’t happen without the BDA and the LAB.
What’s your favourite thing about being part of the Local Association Board?
Well for me it's actually being one of the BDA trustees, because I really enjoy bringing my expertise both as a professional and as a parent to the board, making sure that the parent’s perspective is always heard, and also being able to influence more widely.
The other thing is more about being a trustee of a Local Dyslexia Association than being a part of the Local Association Board, but the dyslexia forum run by volunteers is really helpful and I have learnt so much from it – people running Local Associations can ask a question and people will respond with their experience and suggestions, and that is just really, really useful. It's not so much a part of the LAB, as its part of being a member of an LDA, but some of the people who run it were LAB members.
I love learning, and whilst it has been a very steep learning curve, I have really appreciated the chance to learn so much more about dyslexia and how to support children, parents and adults with dyslexia through Local Associations.
Anything else you’d like to tell us about your Local Association Board experience?
You should join the LAB because you will learn lots. It will provide a really good opportunity to find out what’s going on in your region, and connect with other people in the LDA’s in the region, but also across the country by being part of the LAB. This can be really beneficial, and enables you to share experiences and ideas much more widely than just in your local associations.
If you are interested in influencing more widely, it gives you an opportunity perhaps to become an LDA rep on the board – it’s a really good stepping stone. Having had a year on the LAB before I became a trustee of the BDA, I had much more idea about what was going on and what the BDA was.
In being a member I have met lots of really great inspirational people. I have learnt a lot – not just about dyslexia but also other forms of neurodiversity and the overlap between them, which has made me rethink what I thought I knew. It has really changed my understanding of dyslexia and neurodiversity. I have just learnt so much; it has been so beneficial to me, and I hope to others too.
I would also say don’t be put off of joining because you haven’t got a professional background. I hope parents will come forward, and feel that they can get involved; joining the LAB will really help you to understand how you can help your children. You will just get so much out of joining – your experience is likely typical of parents and we need your perspective on the LAB, and you will get lots of support. There are lots of benefits.