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IN TOUCH – School Closure and Public Speaking

TX:Ìý 11.09.2018Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý JESS QUAYLE

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White

Good Evening.Ìý Tonight, after the closure of a school for visually impaired children with additional health needs what are the parents left searching for appropriate care and education for their children.Ìý And how to hold an audience in the palm of your hand.Ìý We join ex-servicemen who are losing their sight but gaining a new set of skills.

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First though, last week we learned about the closure of the RNIB Pears Centre in Coventry after it failed to satisfy the education standards body Ofsted that it was able to safeguard its pupils adequately.Ìý Its chair, Eleanor Southwood, told us more about why they’d taken that decision to close.

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Southwood

Over the past six months staff and everybody involved has worked very, very hard on improvements to the centre.Ìý It has become clear to us, however, that we have not managed to achieve what the regulators require from us and we are not, therefore, the right people to be providing what is a very, very specialist nursing environment.

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White

But what happens now to a group of children who have special needs beyond their visual impairment?Ìý There are currently 15 children who live at the children’s home and a further eight day pupils who attend the school.Ìý Well I’ve been talking to Hardeep Rai, whose 11-year-old son, Eshan, attends the school.Ìý Hardeep has taken a leading part in a parents’ forum at the Pears Centre and he told me how he felt about the closure.

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Rai

Well Eshan’s been at Pears for almost three years now, he moved in from December 2015, and initially I’d been extremely happy that he’d found a home that I thought was going to be his home for the following 10 years.Ìý So, I’m obviously very disappointed, shocked, angry, frustrated and a whole load of other words in that vein about the closure of Pears.

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White

How sudden was it because of course you will have known about the Ofsted reports and the problems, were you expecting the school to close?

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Rai

To be very honest, Peter, I’ve been a proactive parent over the last two to three years, so I’ve been aware of some of the challenges that Pears have been facing throughout that journey.Ìý I had hoped that it wouldn’t come to this, obviously we all worked very hard with the new management team to try and keep Pears open because we knew that they had challenges but we didn’t think it was going to lead to this.

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White

Just tell us a bit more about Eshan.

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Rai

So, Eshan is 11-years-old and he has cerebral palsy and he is on the severe end of the spectrum, so he is visually impaired, he is not able to eat other than pureed food.Ìý So, he has some very extreme challenges.Ìý He needs one on one care.Ìý However, he is a very sweet, very kind, very caring, very loving little child who’s very inspirational and he doesn’t really exhibit behavioural issues.Ìý But his care is intense and it is full-time.

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White

Just give us perhaps a bit of a picture of the Pears Centre because quite a lot of the children are resident there, just explain how that worked and where they would live.

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Rai

There were five bungalows across the Pears Centre and in each bungalow you have up to six children.Ìý Each child, they have their own room, they have a lovely lounge where they all interact and they have a quiet lounge where parents can go to sometimes.Ìý And the bathrooms had very large baths that would actually move up and down, you know Eshan absolutely adores his baths.Ìý And then you’d literally cross a road that was inside the same grounds and you would come into the school.Ìý And the school was fabulous, it’s a really big place, the classrooms are very well adapted, they have a superb hall.Ìý And then on top of that they had parent quarters, so if we wanted to stay overnight then they had bedrooms for parents.Ìý They had everything there and for the children they’d go to school, they’d come back to the bungalows for lunch, then they’d go to school again.

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White

So, you can see why that’s going to be very hard to replicate.

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Rai

Absolutely.

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White

Now the main reason the RNIB gave for closing the Pears Centre was their inability to satisfy Ofsted that they were able to safeguard the pupils.Ìý Did you have concerns about how he was actually being looked after?

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Rai

Do you know I think the carers on the frontline I think have worked painstakingly hard, I think they are exceptionally good people.Ìý And I was never really worried about Eshan’s care and safety as such.Ìý I think the concerns I had around safeguarding were more around their processes and procedures and senior management.

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White

Explain what you mean by that.

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Rai

So, I think that having seen Pears over the last three years and watched it very closely one of the reasons that we got Eshan into Pears first was that it was Ofsted outstanding, I think, just before the year he went in.Ìý But I think over the last two to three years I had seen a decline in management and the way that they interacted with the carers on the front line.Ìý And that was a great concern to me and that was one of the reasons that I raised a lot of the concerns that I did over the period of time.

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White

And how would you describe the mood of the parents generally now?

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Rai

Very, very angry, very angry and I think that is the predominant feeling.Ìý When I was walking around there just a few days ago you look at the facility, Peter, and it really is quite remarkable.Ìý They have the best of everything in terms of the facilities for all the children and I think a lot of us feel – it’s almost like we don’t believe what’s happening, we feel that it’s really careless to have let an institution like this and a place like this to get it to the point that it’s at, it’s really unfortunate and we all feel that way.

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White

I mean it must feel like an enormous waste.

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Rai

It does and in fact this is one of the things I was just saying to some of the parents the other day, the amount of money that would have gone into this centre, even getting it built, is tens of millions of pounds, Peter, so it’s very unfortunate that it’s in the position that it’s in.

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White

So, can you explain how that has happened, given that, as you said, it had very good Ofsted reports four years ago?

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Rai

The honest truth, Peter, is I don’t really know the ins and outs of what goes on behind the scenes in management, we’ll never really know that as parents.Ìý I suppose we can only go by what we see and some of the simple things that would go wrong were that they would use a lot of agency workers, for instance, and messages that should have been communicated to agency workers about Eshan, for instance, weren’t.Ìý It’s how Eshan’s charts were recorded in terms of his seizures, or different types of things and inconsistencies in the ways that those things were recorded.Ìý And I think that would lead you to think that between the carers and the management or the registered care managers of old, I think it would be fair to say, that the new management team that came in over the last few months have had an extremely difficult time and I don’t apportion a lot of blame to them, so I’m talking about of old, those, I think, are where some of the challenges have lied.

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White

So, were they given long enough then this new team?

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Rai

You know from a parent point of view not really.Ìý I think it would have been nice is there were given another three to six months and they could have really turned things around.

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White

So, what happens to Eshan now?

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Rai

Well Eshan is now in a very challenging situation.Ìý We have seen two schools, we have another two schools that we’re going to see and of course the biggest issue is you can’t compare the facility and that’s the number one thing that we notice, wherever we’ve been to, whatever we’ve seen the facility itself is nothing like RNIB Pears.Ìý But what we have to try and do is look past that now and look at the people, the teachers, the processes, the methods, the expertise they have on site.Ìý There are so many things that we’ve learnt over the last two to three years that we now need to sort of apply in the way that we question these new schools.

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White

So, how difficult will it be for Eshan with this change, with a change of school?

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Rai

You know the beauty of Eshan is he’s had so much change in his life, he’s become a very adaptable child.Ìý Having said that, over the last three years he’s worked very closely with a number of carers that have been excellent with him and I think this move will be very challenging for him, I don’t think it’s going to be easy at all and I think we’re going to have really sort of hold his hand and make sure that the familiar voices that he’s used to are around him during this transition period.

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White

And what about other parents?

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Rai

They’re in similar positions.Ìý I think the fantastic thing about the parents now is that we’re sharing a lot of information – I tell them about schools that I’ve seen and they tell me about schools they’ve seen – and we’re sort of learning from each other.Ìý And that is one very good thing that’s come out of this.

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White

The RNIB said very openly on the programme last week that they felt now that they aren’t the right people to be running a school like this, with those complex nursing needs, do you agree with that?

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Rai

I think when I first came into this place I thought they were the right people because they had done well historically.Ìý But I think having seen what I’ve seen I think it’s not so much the RNIB were not the right people, I think the people that were in management positions may not have been the right people.Ìý So, actually I would say the RNIB probably did have the skillset, I think the carers on the front line certainly had the skillsets.Ìý I mean you always get the odd individuals that may not sort of come up to scratch but the majority of them did.Ìý And so, to me, I put it down to not having the right management in the place actually.

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White

Hardeep Rai.Ìý

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We asked the RNIB about the future of the site.Ìý They told us they had considered a number of options including finding a new provider to run the centre.Ìý Unfortunately, they weren’t able to actually do this in the time they had available, so they’ve decided that the best option is to close the centre.Ìý They say the property will be put on the market.

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And many of you wanted to add your thoughts to the wider ranging interview that we did with the RNIB about its current problems.Ìý Jim Moran from Liverpool was unhappy with what he heard.

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Moran

Such a pity that after more than six months to get their act together that the RNIB Acting CEO and Chair were unable to answer many questions asked by Peter.Ìý No mention of working with partners within the visual impairment sector but still clinging on to ideas of providing local services such as eye clinic liaison officers, which they are unable, because of the geography of the UK, to do effectively.Ìý We can’t afford duplications of services.Ìý My only hope is that they can recruit a CEO with the vision and energy to help its out of touch trustees face the fact of what they are good at and what they are not.

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White

Steven Bremner thought they had to make choices too, although different ones from those of Jim.

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Bremner

Is it time for the RNIB to become more local and less national?Ìý There are many areas in the UK that suffer from poor representation and it can be frustrating to see the county next door with great organisations and one’s own county with an almost non-existent body for blind and partially sighted people.

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White

Gayle Guest worried about where the cuts were likely to fall.Ìý She and her husband volunteer with Talk and Support which helps older visually impaired people get together to chat through their problems.

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Guest

From our experience we know how important this service is to the clients who use it.Ìý We feel that the changes which are having to be made will worry some clients a great deal.Ìý We know that the Talk and Support staff are working extremely hard to make the change as easy as possible for users but as many are elderly and some vulnerable it would be very difficult for them.Ìý This service is important for getting people out of isolation, so it should not be affected by these cuts.

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White

And some of you were concerned by the extent to which visually impaired people are actually involved in the running of the organisation.Ìý Darren Williams emailed:

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Williams

I really cannot believe the interim CEO did not know how many visually impaired people had been made redundant.

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White

And James Bird thinks I should have put another question to the chief executive.

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Bird

If RNIB is an organisation of blind people then shouldn’t a minimum 51% of the staff be blind or partially sighted?Ìý

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White

Do keep your comments coming, you can call our actionline for 24 hours after the programme on 0800 044 044.Ìý Email intouch@bbc.co.uk or click on contact us on our website, from where you can also download tonight’s and previous editions of the programme.

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Now, last Saturday night I got up to deliver an after-dinner speech.Ìý I’ve done quite a lot of these now, it tends to go with the job.Ìý But even now I still get that little flutter of butterflies before I start – will tonight be the night when I dry up.Ìý And of course, there are some people for whom getting up in front of an audience is their biggest possible nightmare.Ìý

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Well now Blind Veterans UK, the organisation for service men and women who are now blind or partially sighted, is offering public speaking courses.Ìý They see it as a way of increasing confidence, adding a skill in the jobs market and as a bit of self-interest too – they like their members to go out and sell the organisation from time to time.Ìý

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Our reporter Tom Walker has just been to Llandudno to listen and learn.

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Crosby

Good morning gentlemen.Ìý What I would like you to do please is just when I ask you to do so if you can just stand up where you are and introduce yourselves to the group.

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Lock

Good morning.Ìý My name’s Alan Lock, ex-Navy man myself, I’ve been with the charity for about 15 years…

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I’m a formal officer in the Royal Navy, I joined from university to serve as a submarine engineer and I began losing my sight fairly early in my career at the age of 24 and, yeah, that was a very life changing event, as you can imagine for me.

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Webb

Now, Alan Lock, we would like to hear from you.Ìý We’d like to hear a little bit about your favourite walk that you’ve had here in Britain.

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Walker

This is Rowan Webb, as toastmaster, introducing fellow trainee Alan Lock.Ìý As Alan was about to give a spontaneous talk lasting 90 seconds.

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Lock

It’s a town called Clevedon in Somerset and if I can just describe to you what it’s like to approach what I think is the most beautiful stretch of the coastline.Ìý Always terrific to go there at dawn, so the sun is coming up, you can feel the rays of the heat on your skin.Ìý As you approach the seafront you can hear the jet of the waves crashing and lapping over the stones, it’s a shingle beach, so you can hear that distinctive…

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Applause

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Webb

Thank you very much there Alan Lock.Ìý Thank you for your time there.

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Lock

I knew I wasn’t the finished article, by any means, coming in here but learning about some of the small kind of tweaks to your style, for me in particular, maybe it’s the posture and yeah, just a lot of good habits about how you structure the speech and finally I suppose just – we’ve been thrown into scenarios where you’ve virtually had to think on your feet.Ìý And I come away from that thinking well actually yeah, I can string together which is vaguely coherent and it’s great going forward, so I’d love to build on what we’ve learnt during these last few years.

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Robinson

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.Ìý Only last Saturday I visited Cardiff on a day’s trip with family and friends.Ìý It’s quite a busy and bustling….

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My name’s John Robinson.Ìý I served 12 years in the Parachute Regiment, jumping out of planes and everything else.Ìý Back in 2008 I ended up getting Macular Degeneration in both my eyes.

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Walker

You’ve been fully sighted, so you obviously know what that feels like and you’re now visually impaired.Ìý What it be easier for you, as a fully sighted person, to do this course do you think?

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Robinson

No, not at all, no because you’re not really using your eyes, it’s giving you the confidence to speak and to be fluent and sort of like crystal clear really.

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Crosby

So, let’s have a look at this whole thing around body language in public speaking.Ìý And what I’ve been encouraging all of you today so far is to be standing up straight with your shoulders down and to face the world, to look at the world.Ìý And if you forget everything else about the training when you go out after today remember that though.Ìý And what will happen is if you develop a strong posture, grounded posture, it will really infect the rest of you, so that your narrative becomes much more confident, your delivery will become more confident – it has a powerful ripple effect to it.

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Walker

Getting your body language right is critical for being an effective public speaker, according to course trainer – Kim Crosby.Ìý Kim says that the blind veterans have exactly the same issues as other people she comes across.

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Crosby

What I do tend to find is that people can be hugely unconfident and the manifests itself in its body language where they do shrink in front of an audience and I need to encourage them.Ìý The people that I come across generally tend to have – they need their confidence boosted and they need to be encouraged and one way to do that is to encourage them to stand up tall and proud, to address the world, to not feel shy about who they are, to celebrate who they are.

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Facial expressions are part of body language as well, so the example that I gave you early in the training course was maybe about a news presenter on TV where if they were commentating on a wedding, for example, a Royal wedding, they might have a smile playing on their lips.Ìý Conversely if they’re talking about something serious like commemorations, the Remembrance Day parade in November, they would do that in more reverential terms and their body language, their face, definitely wouldn’t have a smile on it.

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Another thing for Rowan to think about and for others to think about too, what you might want to consider is plopping in a quotation…

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Webb

Confidence, confidence – I was the kind of person before that I kind of pretended to be confident when maybe I wasn’t, just to give the façade that everything is okay.Ìý Certainly, during this course I’ve no need to do that because I feel confident genuinely.

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Walker

Are there any wider applications of what you’ve learnt from this course?

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Webb

I generally found that I wouldn’t necessarily go out and do things with some of my friends if it was in an evening, whereas since I’ve been involved with blind veterans and doing courses such as the one that I’m doing today it gives you a level of confidence to at least attempt these.Ìý Yes, there are going to be hiccups, there’s going to be situations that are difficult to deal with, but you’re in an environment where you have friends that will teach you how to deal with those.

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White

That report by Tom Walker.Ìý Reactions please – may be your own public speaking tips.

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And that’s it for today.Ìý From me, Peter White, producer Jess Quayle and the team, goodbye.