History
Originally the unit started off as a hostel for deaf children back in the early 1960s. As hearing problems became to be diagnosed earlier through better and more sensitive screening methods the unit's speciality or expertise expanded to include disorders of speech and language. So as not to hold the children back educationally from their peers who could attend normal schools the unit then included an educational curriculum so as to ease the children's eventual transition into mainstream education. The unit then became part of the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital. The unit also went on to develop the Nuffield Centre Dyspraxia Programme which was first published in 1985 and has gone on to be used around the world by many English speaking speech therapists. Furthermore it has been used in a Swedish version named Praxis, see http://www.dop.se/ In 2008 it will be available in Danish, see http://www.dyspraksi.dk/foraeldre.php?dd=0&page=oplysninger_om_foreningen.htm
The unit had the distinction of being the subject of a BBC documentary broadcast on May 13, 1993, entitled The Silence of The Children.
Its address is 6 Castlebar Hill, Ealing London W5 1TD. Google Map
The Royal Free Hospital is currently holding a public consultation on the future of the Nuffield Speech and Language Unit and this matter has been the subject of an Adjournment Debate in the House of Commons.
Read more about this topic: Nuffield Speech And Language Unit
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)