Mindroom

Mindroom is a Scottish charity dedicated to creating and raising awareness of all kinds of learning difficulties.

Mindroom’s 2020 Vision:

Mindroom's goal is to create such awareness that, by the year 2020, all children and adults in Scotland with learning difficulties will receive the recognition and help they need.

Mindroom will work towards this 2020 vision by:

  • Offering direct help and support
  • Arranging high profile conferences
  • Setting up multi-disciplinary diagnostic centres

Why Mindroom was founded

Mindroom was founded in 2001 by Sophie Dow to promote, maintain and improve the public awareness of conditions such as autism, Asperger syndrome, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), Tourette syndrome, dyslexia and DAMP and any other neuropsychiatric condition that may cause learning difficulties.

Sophie’s daughter Annie is 18 years old and has severe learning difficulties as a consequence of a chromosomal deletion on Chromosome 1, the short arm. Having spent years researching the complexities of learning difficulties, Sophie soon realised there was a huge void in terms of access to all round information on learning difficulties.

Mindroom was set up to remedy that.

What Mindroom has achieved

Mindroom has held a number of international conferences and master classes attracting over 2,500 delegates.

These include:

*The Social Brain 2 – See The Bigger Picture at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall 2006

*Mindroom Master Class – London College of Fashion 2004

*See The Bigger Picture – Edinburgh International Conference Centre 2003

Common for all conferences is the interweaving of workshops that look at the research into the brain with the practicalities of living with learning difficulties.

Other Mindroom activities include:

  • Direct Help and Support - launched in 2005
  • Producing literature - “It Takes all Kinds of Minds”, a support pack for teaching professionals sponsored by Royal Mail Education. The popular information pack is now in its fourth print run with a total of 80,000 distributed. "Mindroom Information Guide to your Essential Rights” - for parents containing information on rights, services, mediation and more.
  • Camp Kasper - facilitating international summer camps in Scotland specifically for children with learning difficulties
  • Collaboration with Royal Mail on their Inclusion Policy in recruiting staff with learning difficulties

Direct Help and Support

This outreach help is offered to families and professionals, (teachers, educational support workers, health care professionals) where there is a concern or lack of information about learning difficulties. Mindroom is a first point of contact, by phone, email or in person, for families where there has been a recent diagnosis of, or concern about, learning difficulties. Mindroom also offers support and advice for health care professionals as well as for teachers about methods of providing support in the classroom. In addition Mindroom provides up-to-date information on our website, in booklets and in newsletters, and in the shape of tailored talks and presentations on request.

Mindroom Direct Help and Support was launched in 2005, and is ongoing.

Over the last 12 months, Mindroom has supported over 100 children. The charity is currently also working with approximately 20 requests per month, and receiving over 500 visits to our website each month.

Mig Coupe is Mindroom's Direct Help and Support Manager. Mig is a speech and language therapist with 30 years experience of and speciality in Learning Difficulties. The Service is monitored and evaluated according to the families and professionals supported.

Finances

Mindroom currently receives no statutory funding.

The Future

As part of Mindroom’s 2020 Vision, there is a plan to set up Mindroom Centres. These centres will house diagnosis and assessment, research and development and education and training in one place. This will ensure collaborative working to give each child or adult a complete service and make sure that the most up to date research is instantly available. The idea for the Mindroom centres originated in the desire to create a clinic where the waiting list was no longer than, at most, a couple of months.

Social Brain 3 – See The Bigger Picture 1, 29 – 30 March 2011, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

An international conference on autism, ADHD and other early onset neurodevelopmental disorders to be held in 2011.