Customer Testimonial: Footprints Conductive Education Centre

Footprints Conductive Education Centre is a Nottingham based charity which transforms the lives of children living with mobility and communication difficulties across the East Midlands. At their centre and through their support, babies and children develop the skills they need to thrive and achieve their potential.

Footprints’ work is inspired by the principles and practices of Conductive Education, a holistic education approach developed to help children living with disabilities consciously learn the life skills that come more naturally to others. The charity’s work encourages the development of physical, communication, social, sensory, self-help and thinking skills.

Being able to express yourself and be heard is a basic human right, and helping children develop their communication skills in Footprints’ unique, social setting is a pivotal point of their sessions. And as an organisation, Footprints are constantly seeking alternative ways to diversify the means of communication within their sessions, and to enable individuals to express themselves.

As part of this dedication, the Footprints team have worked hard together on a project to improve their Makaton signing skills. With funding successfully secured from Global’s Make Some Noise and in order for Footprints to become a Makaton Friendly charity, the whole team completed their Level 1 Makaton training in August 2023 with The Makaton Charity and Andrea Patterson.

In addition to this, the Education Team has also undertaken level 2 training with Andrea, and then completed level 3 and 4 in February 2024.

Erika Juhasz, Footprints Head of Service said "as a group we all agreed that the process has enriched our knowledge of Makaton and furthered our deep conviction that Makaton is an essential element of our sessions. We also had a lot of fun learning new signs, symbols as well as practicing to recite and create our own sentences with Andrea Patterson, our very experienced and enthusiastic tutor. It is fair to say that our art skills were also tested in drawing symbol sentences!"

To find out more about Footprints, please go to their website – www.footprintscec.org.

Thursday, 28 March 2024