Ireland: a fresh try

New force joins fray

Ireland (north and south of the border) has been a graveyard of dreams for Conductive Education for years now. Ambitious and hopeful starts have fizzled away to almost nothing, or have been totally erased:

• in Northern Ireland, the last attempt to start something new seems to have come to nothing and the long-running saga of the Buddy Bear School is... well, long-running;

• in the Republic, the only survivor of parents' struggles to establish centres is the amazing, Cork Peto Centre for Conductive Education, going since 1987, all others having succumbed to opposition.

Now a new force has entered the fray, the Special Needs Active Parents (SNAP) of Ireland, arising out of Dundalk in the Republic, a parents' body with concerns wider than Conductive Education, set up in 2004 and already with branches in counties Louth, Monaghan and Cavan.

SNAP held an open information evening on Conductive Education in Drogheda in May. Tonight it holds another such evening, in Dundalk.

It has been a long and hard road to Conductive Education in Ireland. Good luck and best wishes to SNAP.

Information

Special Needs Active Parents

http://www.snapireland.net/

--- (2009) SNAP group host information night, Dundalk Advertiser, 10 June

http://www.argus.ie/news/snap-group-host-information-night-1769110.html

Cork Peto Centre for Conductive Education

http://www.corkpeto.ie/

And only last week in Northern Ireland...

Sutton, A. (2009) State responses to CE in the UK, Conductive World, 13 June

http://www.conductive-world.info/2009/06/state-responses-to-ce-in-uk.html