Tara Woods and Kim Bates met Minister for Special Education Michael Moynihan and TD Shane Moynihan
‘Crack the Code’ programme aims to help dyslexic children
LOCAL mothers, Tara Woods and Kim Bates, joined forces to set up a parent-led after-school literacy programme – Crack the Code – to support children with dyslexia and reading difficulties.
As parents of children with dyslexia, they witnessed gaps in how reading is taught and the exhausting battle that parents face to find proper support.
Through speaking with teachers, they learned that teachers do not get reading instruction training in college, which is vital to helping children with dyslexia learn to read.
Tara and Kim decided to take matters into their own hands and retrain in evidence-based structured literacy approaches aligned with the Science of Reading with dyslexia and reading tutor, Mary Moran.
Mary has 40 years of experience and wrote her own programme based on the Science of Reading which refers to how the brain learns to read, something teachers in Ireland are not trained in.
“When we retrained and then sat down with our own kids, we saw a massive change in them.
“We thought, oh my god, there’s so many kids that could benefit from this, and we’ll never get to access it and that’s how we came up with the idea of creating an after-school programme.”
Tara was grateful for the support they received through community funding from the Ballyfermot Inchicore Credit Union and Palmerstown Credit Union.
Recently, they met with ministers and TDs at Leinster House to advocate for systemic change, which includes the need for mandatory early identification of dyslexic children in schools.
The grassroots initiative has seen huge growth in numbers of parents seeking help for their children who struggle with dyslexia.
Originally, the initiative started with one evening a week in the Ballyfermot Resource Centre, but it has now expanded to three days a week.
“Having previously run our sessions out of the Ballyfermot Family Resource Centre, we are very excited to announce that we are expanding and will be operating from the Palmerstown Community Council Building starting this September.”
The pair are also fighting for better teacher training to identify and support struggling readers and evidence-based reading instruction integrated directly into initial teacher training.
Tara also referenced the lack of support that is offered to parents and children from less advantaged areas, such as those they are working in.
The Crack the Code service aims to assist children who do not have access to dyslexia supports or assessments, whether it be due to financial issues or the lack of services available in the area.
“There’s the big correlation between lack of literacy and prison. We know that the prison service is full of people who grew up unable to read and write, unfortunately, especially in specific areas.
“If your family is from a disadvantaged area, they might not have the means or the know-how to get the intervention or the assessments” Tara said.
“We believe that learning to read should never depend on a child’s postcode, financial means, or ability to fight a broken system.”
Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.
