Hi, just thought I'd let you all know about this awareness week as it could potentially be of benefit to most of our special needs children in the future if it's successful...
The initial inspiration for this was a young lad with 2211q deletion syndrome. As well as having a learning disability, the syndrome has resulted in him being unable to speak.
Obviously, the difficulty for children/young adults with communication problems is that the vast majority of the population don't understand signing. The awareness week is to try and encourage people to just learn the BSL alphabet, that's all - so words can spelt out and, more importantly, other people can read the word.
There's no funding for workshops etc., it's literally just asking people to teach themselves (and others) the BSL alphabet.
The link explains more and shows you how to learn the alphabet for anyone who's interested.
www.herbuzz.com/13-the-buzz/136-learn-to-finger-spell-day-22nd-november.html