Health and Psychology blog

We're delighted to welcome Prof. Alan Baddeley, one of the forefathers of working memory as keynote speaker for this year's Online Working Memory Week. A week long series of free talks on the topic of working memory and its importance.

Last Thursday, The Communication Trust and Pearson were proud to announce the winners of the 2015 Shine a Light Awards, a national awards scheme that celebrates innovative work and excellent practice in supporting children and young people’s communication development.

Yesterday we were delighted to attend the BAOT COT Annual awards reception in London. 

We are delighted to be starting February with a new product launch - the eagerly awaited Sensory Profile 2 by author Dr Winnie Dunn.

The Sensory Profile 2 is a family of assessments that provides you with standardised tools to help evaluate a child’s sensory processing patterns in the context of home, school and community-based activities.

To learn more, view our new Author Learning Series; broadcasts presented by Dr. Winnie Dunn with detailed information on each of the forms.

Plus, we've also put together the following infographic which gives you a handy overview of the technical developments:

Peacehaven Community School, were this year's winners of the Secondary School of the Year, Shine a Light Award. We caught up with Clare O'Rourke, Speech and Language Teacher at PCS to hear about what the school has been doing since winning this prestigious award.

Since winning the Shine a Light Secondary School of the Year award last year Peacehaven Community School has continued to develop our SLCN practice.

We enjoyed a wonderful fund-raising day in October. Staff and students were invited to pay £1 to wear a Onesie for the day with all proceeds going to Leisha’s campaign to raise funds to buy a new electric wheelchair. To launch the day Leisha, a year 8 student with cerebral palsy that affects her speech as well as her mobility, plucked up the courage to address two whole school assemblies. She explained that as well as improving her access to workstations in lessons, the new wheelchair would also help her to join in with conversations with her peers, as she will be able to move around the school in an upright, standing position. Her clear message that she was ‘sick of not being able to join in conversations going on over my head’! was a real eye-opener for the other students.

No Pens Day Wednesday 2014 took place on Wednesday 15th October and was an overwhelming success!

We had over 1,700 schools registered this year, our most popular year yet! This year we have also seen a huge boost in registrations from those working in Early Years settings and special schools, with dedicated resources available for these settings appearing for the first time in No Pens Day 2014. It’s been wonderful that so many new schools and settings have taken part this year and we have been lucky enough to hear about the innovative ways that some of you have used the Trust’s materials.

Congratulations to author of the Beck Inventories, Dr Aaron T. Beck who became the first recipient of the Kennedy Community Health Award from the Kennedy Forum on October 23rd.

The award marks the 50th anniversary of Community Mental Health Act – the last piece of legislation that was signed by President John F. Kennedy which transformed the way mental illness was treated. Dr. Beck was honoured as the father of cognitive therapy and as one of the most influential individuals within the community of mental health.

Find out more on the Aaron Beck Center website

Learn more about the assessments that make up the Beck Inventories on our website.

Dr Fiona Scott is an experience trainer running our recent ADOS-2 Clinical Workshops and Managing Director of Spectrum Specialist Consultancy Ltd. This week we interviewed Dr Scott to find out more about what inspired her to enter her field and who is her role model! 

Earlier this month we spoke to Dr Tom Grange, Chartered Clinical Psychologist, to find out about his experiences of using Q-interactive and his hopes that the delivery of tests via iPad will become the future of all psychometrics.

Richard Johnson has been with Pearson Assessment for just over 18 months and has been involved in the exciting process of launching two new digital assessment platforms within the UK; Q-global and Q-interactive.

Following the launch of 25 products on the Q-global platform last week, we caught up with Richard to find out more.

When The Beatles coined the infamous phrase, ‘Will you still need me? Will you still feed me, when I’m 64?’ many of us sung along giving little thought to the reality of the situation, which according to a new report published by Relate charity is now being faced by many older people in the UK.1