Introduction | Terry Eakin | "My first time", Morag McMurray | Poem by David Preece

Saturday evening banquet. Photo: Rachel Albert

Gail Smith: The lady's not for eating (but the hat is). Photo: BSA Silver anniversary balloon.

The Silver Jubilee Conference birthday cake. Photo: Howard Yaffe

Participants had the opportunity to be grilled by an interviewer in a TV studio. Photo: Trinity and All Saints College

A workshop group decide to move outside. Photo: Howard Yaffe

Keynote speaker Ken St. Louis with his wife, Rae Jean Sielen. "We all have a story to tell." Photo: Howard Yaffe

Trudy Stewart, chair of the conference organising committee, with a BSA founder member "Sparrow" Harrison. Photo: Rachel Albert

Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Neil Taggart, whose commitment to attending the opening night helped set the mood for the weekend. Photo: Howard Yaffe.

Organisers: They made it all happen: (from left) Bryan Wood, Trudy Stewart, Gail Smith, Howard Yaffe, Mark Birdsall. Photo Howard Yaffe.

In the auditorium. Photo: Howard Yaffe.

On the bus from the banquet. Photo: Rachel Albert Jam session. Photo: Howard Yaffe

BSA's 25th anniversary conference in Leeds (12-14 September, 2003) began with stories of openness and courage. Three boys who have been working with Trudy Stewart talked about how they managed their stammering: "Get help, practice and be open. I found friends in school who would help me". "Say what you want to, and never give up". BSA conferences are a great chance to meet old contacts and make new ones.

Two of the opening speakers from the Leeds Health Trust discovered that they both knew the same highly regarded lecturer at university who stammered, a fact only discovered during the opening ceremony. It created the atmosphere that lasted the weekend - of people with a common interest coming together and making new friends. On Sunday afternoon a couple of the delegates who had recently met agreed 'how good it was to be under the same roof with other people who stammer.' Among the 200 delegates were people from Iceland, Austria, the US, the director of the German association and the Chair of next year's world congress for people who stammer, in Australia.

Such a successful and well-organised conference was a tribute to the committee, led by Trudy Stewart and the team: Bryan Wood, Gail Smith, Howard Yaffe, and Mark Birdsall.

One of many highlights was the launch of the new BSA anthology, When the Words Won't Come. One of the contributors to the anthology said: "I was a very strong avoider of speaking compared to many other people there who stammer. Since the conference I have began to tackle that step by step. I so want to thank all people involved for not only an excellent, enjoyable and informative weekend, but for helping me to meet other people who stammer and for me to realise that stammering is not the 'end of the world'!"

Can it feel this good?
By Terry Eakin

My first BSA conference was an apprehensive visit to Sheffield. Four years later I arrived in Leeds fully convinced that this was going to be a great weekend and so it was.

Two things that I'll always remember were:

The Opening Event
Trudy Stewart and her conference organising team usher us all into the massive auditorium of All Saints College. Three 8 year old boys steal the show by each eloquently telling us how good the local speech therapists are. Their bravery obviously affected everybody and, when they finished, there was hardly a dry eye in the room. Trudy gave them some cake and the party began.

Think on presentation
One of the challenges at conferences is to try to pick the workshops which are most relevant to your life.

This year I was lucky. Jackie Turnbull's presentation was all about thoughts, emotions, feelings and behaviours; things that I've been reading a lot about in the past year. Examining our thoughts and thinking rationally is surely one of the keys to success and happiness.

Jackie covered some fascinating stuff and gave us all a comprehensive 'tip list' of ways to challenge negative thoughts. A few weeks later, I showed Jackie's list to John Harrison at his Dublin seminar; he loved it too, and took a copy back across the Atlantic.

This is surely what BSA conferences are all about: learning, exchange of information and having a great time. Don't miss your next opportunity in Scotland 2004.

My first time
by Morag McMurray, speech and language therapist

The BSA Silver Jubilee Conference took place in Leeds in September 2003. BSA's 25 year history was celebrated in style with delicious meals, drinks, dancing, sparklers and, of course, a huge birthday cake.

As a newcomer to BSA conferences, my first experience involved attending the 'first timers' group. Here, all the first timers were encouraged to get to know one another by asking questions from a list provided (for anyone who is interested, John from Australia thought that Spiderman would win in a fight with The Hulk!)

Following the opening ceremony, Friday evening was taken up with a pub quiz, entertainment by a local brass band and of course lots more time to get acquainted with fellow conference attendees.

Saturday morning saw the start of the workshops which were very varied: theoretical (the role of shame in stammering, applying personal construct psychology, brain research); practical (avoiding avoidance, how to help and not help loved ones who stammer); BSA schemes (the telephone link scheme); poster presentations (student scholarships, e-friends); and the BSA book launch of 'When the Words Won't Come'.

The e-friends scheme, a BSA sponsored e-mail list to put people who stammer in touch with each other, is something I've started using since attending the conference. Working with children and young people who stammer in Scotland, it can be difficult to enable contact with others of a similar age. I've begun giving out the e-friends address (e-friends@stammering.org) to older children and young people and would encourage others to do the same, in order to set up a support network for this group of clients using a format they are familiar with (even if their SLTs are not!)

Obviously, I attended many useful workshops, but I'd like to report on one of the most interesting, by Mike Retzinger from the USA, entitled 'The Monster Study'*. A very dynamic speaker, he was enthusiastic in his discussion of a study by Dr Wendell Johnson and Mary Tudor in 1939. This study, conducted using 22 orphans (aged five to eleven years), looked at the impact of endorsing or removing the labels of 'stammering' or 'normal speaker'. The reported results of this study were that the group of children who were stammering and had the label of 'stammering' removed, increased their verbal output and halved the number of pauses in their speech. The group of normally speaking children to whom the label of 'stammering' was applied were reported to decrease their verbal output, double the number of pauses in their speech, speak slower and with greater exactness and appear more self conscious.

Mike Retzinger had looked into this little talked about study further to meeting Mary Tudor. She informed Mike of some other findings she had observed in the group of normally speaking children who were labelled as stammering: they showed signs of frustration and anger; they changed topics and words; and they displayed increased body movements and muscle tension in their articulators. In Mary Tudor's opinion, these children were stammering by the end of the study, however, these findings were not reported in the article.

Unfortunately, little time was available to discuss the impact of these findings on our clinical practice. However, Mike did ask us to think about the fact that most children attending speech and language therapy for the first time have already been labelled as a stammerer (by members of the family, nursery or school staff etc.) before they walk through our clinic doors.

Saturday evening's entertainment involved a banquet at the Royal Armouries, an auction, and strutting our stuff on the dance floor.

Sunday was a more family orientated day, with activities and workshops for children, young people and their parents, as well as more workshops for adults who stammer and speech and language therapists.

So, what are my overall impressions of a BSA conference? I had a fantastic time, learnt a few things, met lots of interesting people, and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone. (My one piece of advice is to pick a mixture of theoretical and more practical workshops, or take the Monday off work to let your brain recover!) Anyway, it must have been good as I'm now on the organising committee for the BSA Conference 2004, to be held in Scotland. I hope to see you all there!

Morag McMurray's article is courtesy of Signal (Winter 2003 edition), the magazine of the Special Interest Group in Disorders of Fluency (SIG) - www.fluencysig.org.uk.

*Note on 'The Monster Study':
The University of Iowa said in 2001 that it was "deeply sorry for the regrettable stuttering experiments" on the children 60 years before, and that with the controls now in place they were confident experiments of this nature could not happen again. In August 2007, six people who as children were used in the experiment were awarded nearly $1,000,000 in compensation (link to BBC News article).

Sunday Morning

Strips of cloud over Trinity, still and underlit with pink and orange
Quiet now and beautiful in early morning light

So, the last day begins and memories swirl inside my head
The train up with William, full of anticipation for events ahead
Arrival and a sweet hug from Trudy
Roy, Ron and Rachel, old friends all, are here
as others - familiar or not - drift in

Norbert strides by - quick hello - as I talk with Chi-Chi, newcomer,
taking things in her stride, cool amidst the rising hum.
Later, Trudy's stars impress, as does the Lord Mayor's address.

Yesterday, conversations snatched or long, greetings, smiling faces
animated over breakfast, talking of past or present.
Workshops, structured or informal, meeting our needs
and inspiring us with hope and ideas.

Ken St. Louis holds our attention with his story through the hot afternoon
and sings his song sweetly.
Amy and others read their poems to great applause
and some emotion at the book launch.

To the Banquet ! Endless talk and laughter on the menu
The excitement of the auction and Sparrow and Ron
and Andrew and Peter, guiding stars of previous times, are here!

So, the last day begins and the sky is bluer now.

David Preece