John Thompson, organiser of the Open Day, with speaker Monica Bray A great success May I take this opportunity of thanking John Thompson on organising his first Open Day in Norwich which I attended. It was great to meet up with a few old faces and meet some new members from that area. The day was a great success. John, when is the next one? Soon I hope. Ron Smith, Barking, Essex

Events around the country to help celebrate BSA's 30th Anniversary kicked off last April with a successful Norwich Open Day, organised by John Thompson of the Norfolk and East Suffolk self-help group.

Talks included Monica Bray of Leeds Metropolitan University on theories of why we stammer, Sally Wynne and Kate Morley from Norfolk PCT on the Lidcombe Programme for young children, as well as the McGuire Programme (Michael Bailey), confidence (Jaik Campbell), and Dominic Barker Trust.

Rachel Everard from City Lit gave an introduction to cognitive therapy. She suggested it can be helpful to look at the thoughts that underlie our feelings about a situation (eg a thought such as 'I may be judged because of my speech'). Thoughts are not necessarily true. One way to challenge a negative automatic thought (NAT) is to see whether you are falling into a 'negative thinking trap', for example taking things personally, or believing you know what the other person is thinking.

The last talk of the day was again by Monica Bray, on electronic devices. She is currently running a project funded by the Dom Barker Trust to test the prototype 'telephone assistive device' (TAD) developed by VoiceAmp. This feeds altered auditory feedback to the person who stammers through the earpiece of their phone (which may help fluency), and can play recorded speech, eg a greeting, to the other person. More on this in a future issue of Speaking Out.

John Thompson reported afterwards that he was resting hard with the help of Adnams but feeling very happy. "It was thrilling to see so many people there. I could see that all the speakers were holding everyone's interest. I'm also pleased that it has already increased the number of people coming to support group meetings."

From the Summer 2008 issue of 'Speaking Out', page 4