I’m Katie, I’m a Speech and Language Therapist working in primary and secondary schools in Lewisham, in southeast London, and I’ve been running ‘DLD and Me’ groups over the past few years. Of all the interventions I do, ‘DLD and Me’ is the one I find the most rewarding, and the one that seems to make the most difference to the wonderful young people I’m lucky enough to work with.
I first delivered the intervention 5 years ago, with a group of six Year 7s, in the secondary-aged resource base I’m based at once a week, for young people with a diagnosis of DLD. The intervention was so well received in the resource base that I started running it every year for the new year 7s, and 2 years ago I also started running a group for year 7s with DLD at a mainstream secondary school I work at.
As I’ve got more and more familiar with ‘DLD and Me’ and have seen which bits are most helpful for students, I’ve started trying to do something special at the end of our blocks of sessions to give them a chance to show how much they’ve learnt and have something to celebrate, and it’s at these times I can really see the impact the sessions have had. With some of the resource base students, we’ve spent a few sessions where they make their own PowerPoint presentation about DLD, and then they present it to the rest of the group. It’s wonderful seeing them all get up in front of the class and confidently talk about some of the ways DLD impacts them, and strategies they can use if they get stuck.
Meanwhile, over at the mainstream secondary school, one of the students asked me in our last session if they could have pin badges. I thought this was a genius idea, because it would be a great conversation starter – people would see the badges and say, “What’s DLD?” which would mean they’d have lots of opportunities to talk about it and raise awareness. So, fast-forward a few weeks, and, with a little help from Etsy, I presented the students with these:
That was back in April, and they’re still proudly wearing them now (early November!). Another thing I’ve started doing to mark the end of our sessions is supporting the students to talk on camera about what it’s like having DLD, to contribute to the videos for RADLD’s annual DLD Awareness Day. Some of them prefer not to be filmed, so it’s never been an obligatory thing, but most of them jump at the chance to ‘go viral’! The resource base students needed more support to plan what they were going to say, but they were all able to choose at least two things they wanted everyone to know about DLD. Several of the mainstream students were able to talk at length, unscripted, about how it feels to have DLD, and I used their footage to make a longer video which was shown in an all-staff inset training at their school in September, to raise teachers’ awareness of DLD.
Do have a watch of this year’s DLD Awareness Day video – the students did SUCH a fabulous job. So far it’s had over 400 views – although I don’t think that counts as going viral!
If the video isn’t proof enough of the incredible impact the ‘DLD and Me’ programme can have on children and young people with DLD, I will finish by giving you a few quotes from the parents of students that have been in the groups:
"With your help our son has acquired a most impressive understanding of his DLD. His acceptance and appreciation of the differences and challenges he will perhaps experience will surely stand him in good stead in terms of helping him overcome and override them. We are really impressed and reassured by his confidence in this regard. It’s great!”
“Since he’s been diagnosed with DLD and he’s done his group work to understand his own learning needs, he’s become more confident to be able to say, ‘look, I don’t understand’, or maybe, ‘I need more time to do my learning’. He’s really ready to continue his learning journey at school, with that greater understanding of who he is, and what that means for him in his learning environment.”
The mother of one of the girls in the video told me that all the work she has done on DLD has “made her proud of herself”. She told me how her older son had asked his sister, “Why are you wearing that badge?” and she replied, “Because I’m proud of it! Why shouldn’t I wear it?! I have no reason to hide DLD!”