Angela James, Dip. RSA

As someone with learning difficulties and ADHD, it can feel as though you have missed the memo that the people around you seem to have received. You know that you are missing something, and as a result you strive desperately to figure everything out, masking the deep loneliness and confusion that you feel inside. You develop “coping mechanisms” that can be innocuous, or at times harmful to yourself and others to deal with this experience. 
 
Working with Angela, and going through the concepts of life has been transformational for me. The programme gently goes back through those developmental lessons (or memos) I missed and fills in the blanks. It allowed me to speak about some of the depths of what I had experienced in my not knowing, and healed them. It’s hard to explain but I felt all these disparate parts of me get pulled back together and my self image totally changed. Honestly, life changing.
 
I look back and wonder what my life would have been like if I had had the opportunity to do this work when I was young. I think it would have been fantastic. Getting the right help really does make all the difference. 

My son, my husband and myself, separately, attended The Davis Autism Approach Programme with Angela James in 2013. It was a comforting, rewarding and nourishing experience that helped us to move forward in our relationship together and with life in general.

Angela helped us to take hold of some challenging concepts that we were having difficulty dealing with at the time. Angela’s approach was gentle, intuitive and engaging, she had a good hold on assessing our needs in each moment and tailoring the programme to meet us as individuals. We felt seen, heard and supported.

Our son is dyslexic and was struggling on many levels to manage school work, social interactions and have a social life outside of school. He is now a competent young man of 19 working as a Senior Water-Sports Instructor. He has many qualifications under his belt and is enjoying a good social life.

We were delighted to have found the programme at a time when we most needed it, we were in a very difficult place. Angela’s style really suited us and benefited our family as a whole.

We would highly recommend Angela as a facilitator of the programme.

I have no hesitation in recommending Angela James as a Davis Dyslexia Coach. A few years ago she assisted us for 2 separate weeks, with my son who is severely dyslexic and had been really struggling at school, to the extent he had been withdrawn from one school. She is supremely patient and kind and indeed, travelled up from Reading to stay near us on the Wirral for both weeks, in order to allow our son to access the teaching and coaching in Word structures. The principle was that he studied the meanings of all the most common words, constructed them in clay and they were photographed as an aide memoir, so that he remembered them in 3D, which is his preferred learning method.

Subsequently as an outcome of the process, his reading accelerated enormously and  he has been able to read books ( Including novels) and complete 6 GCSEs last year. He still has a little extra help in exams but he no longer requires a Reader for example, and has some scribing help as his writing is slower. He is now doing BTEC hospitality, BTEC sport and A level Business studies which is a course with essays and a lot of reading to do. 
 
We will always be so grateful to Angela for her help and support at a difficult time; having a child with learning difficulties is very hard for the child and the parents especially as my husband and I are both  doctors, very academic, and probably found it harder to understand Jamie’s learning style. She was a beacon of support and hope in navigating the lack of specialist provision for these issues. 

I am very pleased to endorse Angela James as a Davis Dyslexia Facilitator based on the work undertaken with my son during his time at Highdown Secondary School where special needs support was limited. We found Angela to be very accommodating always willing to go the extra mile. We have experienced good Davis Facilitators in other countries, and Angela did not disappoint us and contributed greatly in preparing the foundation for my son to embark on his GCSE years. My son has gone onto excel at A-levels and is studying Chemistry at University of Warwick. None of this would have been possible without the foundation of Davis Dyslexia, and Angela's vast experience in applying those principles.
We later used Angela's service to lay similar foundations for our daughter even though she is not Dyslexic. Thus our association has spanned at least 3 years in total and would highly recommend her services to educate any child with or without dyslexia to lay the proper GCSE foundations or any of the age appropriate Davis Dyslexia methodologies.
Though Davis Dyslexia is a commercial enterprise it is evident that Facilitators do what they do as they have seen the results in their students, and they know it works when applied correctly.

When my daughter was in Year 2 her school were worried that she was showing signs of dyslexia. A family friend recommended that we approach Angela James, as soon as possible, as the work she does could help our daughter in the long term.

Our daughter met with Angela once a week for a couple of years, although unfortunately our sessions were disrupted by various lockdowns. Our daughter really enjoyed her "Angela days"; (she loves talking about herself!) the focus exercises and she loved working with the clay. What I liked about the sessions was that Angela explored much more than just our daughter's dyslexia  - she worked with our daughter with her issues on focusing and keeping on task. The techniques Angela taught our daughter have stayed with her and she uses them now she is at secondary school. 

I appreciated the regular catch up meetings that we had and the guidance she gave me as a parent to help our daughter.