T he Polish Dyslexia Association has recently had its sixth anniversary, having started in December 1990.
What decided the setting up of this association? Dr Marta Bogdanowicz, a Professor at the University of Gdansk, was asked to give a paper on The Care of Dyslexic Children in Poland at the European Dyslexia Association Conference in Aachen (Germany). During this conference she became acquainted with the aims of this Association and with the people involved in it, such as Marcel Seynave, Marion Welchman and Robin Salter. She was surprised by the unusual feature, to Polish eyes, of an association of parents and professionals together, like a social movement! However, this was very attractive to Polish ways of thinking at that time because of the success of Solidarity.
Although the problem of dyslexia had been known in Poland since 1930, it was not very popular with teachers, psychologists, speech therapists or indeed with society at large. In Aachen Dr Bogdanowicz was asked whether she or anyone else would found a Polish Association and, as a clinical psychologist who had worked with dyslexics for 25 years and written books and articles on the subject and as the mother of a dyslexic daughter, she had no hesitation in agreeing.
The Polish Dyslexia Association has developed very well thanks to the co-operation of a group of professionals, especially Maria Pietniun, who works with younger children and had long been running courses for teachers, and Renata Czabaj, who works with adolescents and who has set up a diagnostic and therapeutic clinic belonging to the Polish Dyslexia Association. In all, 26 units have been set up in the largest towns in Poland and the Association owns two advice centres.
Thanks to the enthusiasm of our members, hundreds of articles have appeared in Polish newspapers and there have also been radio and TV programmes. In 1993 there was a very important round table discussion on Warsaw TV on 'Dyslexia and Early Recognition'. The increase in public awareness of dyslexia has brought us a new and difficult challenge, because of the need for good diagnosis and for correct decisions as to how to be of most help.
We have held five all-Polish Conferences on Difficulties in Reading and Writing in the past 5 years. The last conference involved 300 participants and included guests from the UK, Norway, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium and the Czech Republic. In September 1996 there was a joint conference with the Polish Psychological Association at which Professor Peter Bryant and Dr Chris Singleton (both from the UK) were invited speakers. A symposium entitled 'A hundred years of dyslexia' was also included.
The Association has also run courses on Theory, Diagnosis and Therapy (leading to a diploma), Good Start courses for children at risk and courses on Developmental