DCATCH conference 2

[Helen Dempster]

Hi all

I went to the Kent DCATCH conference yesterday (I will use the word 'conference' very loosely!) as only 5 of us turned up! 3 of us were childminders. I was shocked at the poor attendance figure, as it was such a good 'conference', very informative and I got alot out of it. There was a talk given by a boy called Toby who was severely disabled and used a speech synthesiser. He was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy when he was a baby, but has since gone on to set up a charity called JustDifferent which offers workshops in schools from KS1-KS4. His mum was told he wouldn't be able to do anything and he said "well, look at me now!" He's only 29. There was also a great visual impairment workshop where they had a range of glasses that represented different forms of impairments and a hearing impairment talk (I learned some basic sign language).

So if any of you hear about this FREE conference in your area, I would thoroughly recommend going on it.

[Mouse]

It sounds brilliant, but what a shame more people didn't turn up. Our conference was a few months ago and well worth going to.

[Blaze]

Our DCATCH conference was snowed off before Christmas, so they've rebooked it for the end of this month - I'm really looking forward to it. Only 10 places were offered to CM's here I was one of the lucky ones to get a place & am really looking forward to it!