I think you may have some statatory legal protection if you used a finance company and the service company went bust.

I suggest you get some advice from Citizens Advice. Dont accept any answer from Dore/Zebra as they dont appear to be very upfront at telling people what they are legally entitled to.

Please let us know how you get on.

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Chris

Also Dr Angela Richardson’s research and more is on the website of the charity Food and Behaviour Research.

The major problems at the moment with all this seem to be that:
There is not enough research being done, not enough funding, nor enough money for assessments and for helping children with learning difficulties.

There are research groupings that each favour their own hypothesis and fight for it, with individuals involved who seem unable to understand that there are different causes for similar symptoms, and that often people have more complex developmental disabilities that do not fall totally into one category or another. This goes for Wynford Dore & DDAT as well. Not everyone with dyslexia or other learning difficulties will benefit from this programme.

The Dore reseach was badly designed – this is a huge shame as I am sure properly designed research would have shown the benefits of the Dore programme. As it is, the bad research design has resulted in the cerebellar hypothesis and Dore programme being left wide open to criticism, rather than being taken seriously.

For proper research proof there have to be control groups, you have to be very careful over selection of test subjects, and neither the people working with the children, nor the children and parents, must know which exercises, control or Dore, they are working with, and it needs to be repeated with large enough groups. This is very difficult to achieve, especially as the Dore programme has had a lot of publicity.

For parents of children with for eg seizures, and some other developmental difficulties, I would definitely check with the hospital consultant before putting my child into the Dore programme. That means getting full information on the programme to give the consultant.

See Peter Blythe: http://www.inpp.org.uk/

I have a friend with non-dyslexia learning difficulties whose abilities and life changed enormously for the better after doing a programme with INPP.

Uta Frith did some research to test the cerebellar hypothesis:
http://cogprints.org/2349/
Conclusion: This study provides partial support for the presence of motor problems in dyslexic children, but does not support the hypothesis that a cerebellar dysfunction is the cause of their phonological and reading impairment.

Though I would like to see the full list of tests she used.

It is clear that a lot of people are helped by the Dore programme, for whatever reason. However, much of it does seem to be based on Dr Belgau’s Balametrics (long standing research and successful programme). This is much cheaper than the Dore programme, so parents who cannot afford Dore might look at the Balametrics website, and how about getting together in groups to purchase Balametrics materials? I know it would depend on finding enough people nearby who need it, but I suspect that there are so many adults and kids who have dyslexic and other learning difficulties who are not getting proper help that this would not be impossible. Advertise locally. People in the USA can check on local access to Balametrics.

The other research that contributed to Wynford Dore’s end product was Dr Levinson’s work. He also identified inner ear & cerebellar problems, but uses medications (eg anti-motion sickness antihistamines). I would not do this without testing and only with a doctor.

However, balance testing can be done under the NHS, if you can persuade your GP or Community Paediatrician to refer you. They use that equipment that whizzes you around – is this the same as the Dore equipment?

I found out that the community paediatrician assessment is somewhat lacking. The paediatric OT only tested for my child being unable to put two skills together, whereas he can do two but not three. The paediatrician did not know what specialism was the right one for testing my son to find out why he was getting dizziness and vomiting when he tried to read. And it took years and years – we were defeated in the end.