It’s been an unusual but busy year at the PDA Society …
- The new website & discussion forum went live in February
- We had to cancel our conference due to Covid
- Lots of Covid-related resources/info were created/shared and we did a short survey about life under lockdown with PDA
- We produced the new What is PDA? booklet
- Training moved online and we delivered 8 parent/carer courses and an introductory course for educators, in addition to delivering 11 online PDA courses for other organisations
- Enquiries really ramped up with our team handling upwards of 125 enquiries a month
- We launched a fundraising campaign & a free monthly newsletter service
- Our info was translated into lots of other languages, including Persian
- New research has been published to help move our understanding of PDA forward
- In anticipation of our 5th anniversary, we undertook a survey to understand our impact to date and help shape our future plans – the results have been really valuable and we’ll circulate the report on 5th Jan
- The whole PDA community has been really active too this year, with an abundance of online talks, resources being shared, blogs and vlogs, memes, new books and fundraising activities
There’s lots planned already for next year, starting with marking our 5th anniversary with the launch of a new easily shareable What is PDA? video, followed by a new suite of training programmes, a project around supporting a more consistent approach to identifying the PDA profile and lots of new resources including an EHCP guide and home ed ‘hub’.
We’d like to say a very big thank you to our team of volunteers, helpers and advisers for all their expertise, experience and commitment and for spending so much time and energy helping others – we couldn’t do any of this without you!
And also a very big thank you to everyone who has donated or raised funds for the PDA Society this year – we’re incredibly grateful for your support.
Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and all the very best for a Happy New Year,
Sally, Vikki, Paula, Debs, Hilary & Jilly
Trustees of the PDA Society
