BSA webmaster Allan Tyrer (left) has developed the highly informative BSA website. RCSLT President Sir George Cox presented the College's special recognition award. Photo: RCSLT.

The BSA webmaster, Allan Tyrer, was awarded the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists' Diamond Jubilee Special Recognition Award for outstanding voluntary service. For the past six years, Allan has developed the BSA website into a pre-eminent source of information on stammering which is used by many thousands of people a year, devoting two days a week to the job. In addition, he had provided valuable legal support on disability issues, most recently with the BSA submission to the consultation on new guidelines for the Disability Discrimination Act.

Other awards on the occasion of the Royal College's 60th anniversary were to Daniel Hunter, himself a person who stammers, who won the first ever Speech and Language Therapist of the Year award. Roberta Lees MBE, lecturer at Strathclyde University, member of the BSA Scotland Committee and specialist in stammering, and Frances Cook from the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children were awarded the Honours of the Royal College - many congratulations to all of them. It was a night where stammering swept the board!

From the Winter 2005 edition of Speaking Out