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Conductive education with the Rainbow Centre

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In this episode, Lindsay Da Rè, Senior Associate - Solicitor in the Court of Protection team speaks to Enikő Kocsis from the Rainbow Centre. With over 20 years of expertise, Enikő reveals the Rainbow Centre’s mission to aid children and adults with neurological conditions by leveraging the principles of neuroplasticity.

In this enlightening episode, Enikő delves into the comprehensive support the Rainbow Centre offers for individuals with brain injuries and other disabilities. From managing financial affairs and accessing community care to obtaining education, health, and care plans, Enikő sheds light on the myriad ways the Centre assists families. 

Join us for a deep dive into the world of conductive education and the impactful work of the Rainbow Centre. 

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Lindsay Da Rè: 0:03

Hello and welcome to the Boys Turner podcast. I'm Lindsay Darre. I'm a Senior Associate Solicitor in the Court of Protection team. Today, I'm going to be talking with Eniko Kocsis from the Rainbow Centre about conductive education. Hi Eniko, thanks so much for joining me today.

Eniko Kocsis: 0:21

Hi, Lindsay, it's a real pleasure to be on this podcast with you. I know we've been planning it for a while, so I'm really excited to tell everybody who's wanting to listen to a podcast about conductive education what it is all about and what we provide here at the Rainbow Centre for our families.

Lindsay Da Rè: 0:38

Thank you. Maybe we could start with you just telling me a little bit about the Rainbow Centre. Who are you and what do you do?

Eniko Kocsis: 0:44

I manage the children's service here at the Rainbow Centre and I've been working here for over 20 years now and leading the children's service team for roughly about 10 years. So the Rainbow Centre is a specialist setting. We provide a system of learning called conductive education for children and adults.

Eniko Kocsis: 1:05

We are in the south coast, in Fareham, in a beautiful purpose-built building which was built in now oh gosh, almost 20 years in 2006, for us to provide sessions for the families who's got children or adults in their families with different neurological conditions. So the Rainbow Centre is a charity, so we receive very little statutory funding, so we have to do a lot of fundraising in terms of meeting the needs of our families who come to us. We work with a highly professional team, so our conductors are all qualified as conductors, conductive teacher or conductive teachers, and got specialism either in children and adults, and then we've got a couple of assistants, sort of completing our team.

Lindsay Da Rè: 1:57

Excellent, and so you're focused primarily on conductive education. I think possibly there might be people listening who don't know much about conductive education, or maybe haven't heard of it before at all. Could you explain a bit about what conductive education is specifically and what sort of conditions it can be helpful for?

Eniko Kocsis: 2:16

So conductive education, as it says a little bit in the name, it's an education, so it's a system of learning and is a pedagogical approach to meeting the needs of children and adults with different neurological conditions. So the founder of conductive education was András Pető, who was a Hungarian professor whose qualification was in medicine primarily, but he was really intrigued looking at the different neurodiagnoses in terms of a pedagogical approach and he looked at all of the theorists who even nowadays we look at as people who underpin our theory. So he looked at internal speech. He looked at how to retrain the part of the brain which isn't damaged, who didn't suffer damage from that, with children, for example, who have cerebral palsy and looked at how we can retrain the brain which is not damaged. When you think back that in the 1940s there was very little available in terms of research and as well as having a CT scan or an MRI scan available for him to think of the concept of neuroplasticity, he was really forward thinking of his time and nowadays neuroplasticity is common. We talk about it with physiotherapists, occupational therapists and loads of other professions because it's now common knowledge that we know that the brain is like a sponge and we are able to build out new neuropathways to take over the damaged part of the brain.

Eniko Kocsis: 3:55

So the example I always give for neuroplasticity is I don't really like knitting, okay, I have got no interest in it, I've got no motivation, which you need for all of these things. But if somebody would motivate me and somebody would say come on, Eniko, let's go and you can learn knitting, then I would have a brilliant tutor, wouldn't I? Because somebody would model it to me, somebody would show me how to do it. I would then start copying that person and through the daily repetition, doing it over and over and over again, my brain would send the right message to my fingers, to my arms, to my thinking, how those patterns will develop in my knitting and eventually I would learn it Okay. So that's a very similar concept with children with cerebral palsy, with adults with head injury, adult CP. So this is what conductive education based on - is neuroplasticity. 

Lindsay Da Rè: 4:56

That’s really interesting. So is the approach of conductive education different from the other interventions that you mentioned, like physiotherapy or occupational therapy. What's the kind of key differences between them?

Eniko Kocsis: 5:10

So occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and to some extent speech and language. However, occupational therapy and speech and language sits somewhere in the middle between a therapeutical approach and an educational approach. But our approach is fully educational. Okay, so we are not medically trained, although we have got as conductors and part of the conductive training. We have got modules in anatomy, neuroanatomy and some of those medical modules, but the majority of the modules is around pedagogy and around the education of that person who comes through the door, whether it's a child or an adult.

Eniko Kocsis: 5:52

There are eight overarching features of conductive education which without conductive education doesn't exist, and those are the conductors. So it's really important that within the setting you've got a conductive educator, a conductive teacher or a conductor. You know we're all called slightly differently, but it's somebody who has got a degree in conductive education. It's really really important because that is the person who will design the conductive educational program to our participants, whether those are children or whether they are adults. Then a group is really important to us. So when you think about physio therapies, occupationally therapies, speak and language therapies that really, generically speaking, are one-to-one. Conductive education always happens in a group. It's a group of children or adults working with a group of professionals, not necessarily one-to-one. So depending on the children's levels of needs, it might be that one conductor working with two or three children, but with the more complex children we can definitely provide one-to-one within that group setting.

Lindsay Da Rè: 7:01

But it's key to have the group around, even if people are working one-to-one within the larger group.

Eniko Kocsis: 7:07

Absolutely, because we use the social-emotional power of the group setting. So having that camaraderie, having that encouragement and motivation which the group brings, and that encouragement, that motivation of the people working together. So a good example I can give you. So maybe you know, we've got a child who is able to walk independently and move independently around the setting in the same group as a child with really complex needs within the daily routine, the programme is individualised for the children, but also the level of support we're giving them. However, what that does as well is that the child who is really independent encourages the other children as well. You know, look, this is how you crawl, this is how you roll, look at me walking. And they motivate each other. Yeah, they motivate each other, exactly, Lindsay. And also some of these children will need to be slowed down at the same time. So again, you know, the children with more complex needs. Give them the opportunity to slow down during the program to to, for example, to stop and wait, and then give them the ability to think about their movements during those programs which are a bit slower, because we might want them to learn, you know, an ortho-functional movement pattern rather than carry on the way they have learned it. You know, our group is always heterogenic and not homogenic all the time. It's children with different levels of ability and also different ages. Within reason, obviously we wouldn't have a one-year-old and an 18-year-old in the same, but the age ranges are varied as well.

Eniko Kocsis: 8:53

Within conductive education, as I said earlier, we've got a program of learning which is called the daily routine, which is set. It's time bound and the program built up on top of each other for a reason to create an algorithmically structure, so each program builds on the one before it. And those programs got to be set up by the conductive teacher or conductor as well, and it's always set up for that particular group so it meets that group's needs. Within that program we've got different tasks series, so that could be children doing different tasks in a lying position or standing position or sitting position, and then we also got individualised programmes as part of it. And what's really really important, that we also include all self-help in it, so children are encouraged to be as independent as they can be, with expert help all through the day.

Eniko Kocsis: 9:54

And whilst we have got specialised equipment, it's not what you see, in a special school, for example. So we don't have standing frames, we have walking frames for some of our children and we have got wheelchairs for some of our children. But we always look at how the child can take as active part in their own transitioning, in their own movement as possible with our expert facilitation. And that's another really important part of conductive education is our facilitation technique, which then varies. You know we won't have time to go into that during this podcast, but our facilitation varies between, you know, manual facilitation, which people think as naturally facilitation is, but other than that, we use so many different approaches within which could be equipment. You, you know our motivation is a type of facilitation. The group is a type of facilitation because it's facilitating all of that learning taking place, all through the day.

Lindsay Da Rè: 10:53

So is conductive education purely focused on improving physical abilities, or does it have benefits in other areas of development as well?

Eniko Kocsis: 11:02

Yes, it definitely has. So ours is a holistic approach. So we're looking at all areas of learning for a child and I didn't mention it earlier, but as part of our children's service we have got an offset registered nursery, which means we not only have to provide conductive education for our children, but also the earliest curriculum as well, and within that there is personal, social, emotional development, communication and language, and then all of the different aspects like mathematics, literacy, you know, some of the art and imaginative play and all of these things, no matter what part of the children's service you go to, or in adults as well, included in our sessions.

Eniko Kocsis: 11:43

So our programme is set up in a way to meet children's needs in all of those four key areas, such as personal, social, emotional development, communication and language, cognition and interaction, and physical and sensory needs. And when we set up our sessions, they are challenging for the child physically, because we want to challenge them, we want to take them to that next level of development, both in their physical skills but also in the other key areas. But we use those other key areas as a motivational approach as well. So you know I've already talked about you know, from a social aspect point of view, the group, how important that is and how much you know that encourages one child to do the next thing or try and new, challenging things. We have got a total communication approach within our setting, which means we use a variety of communication techniques such as, you know, object of references, switches, buttons, visual timetables, makaton, as well as encouraging speech itself as well.

Lindsay Da Rè: 12:52

And I was wondering as well if you could tell us a bit about how the Rainbow Centre funds your work. Do you have access to any public funding for what you do, or do you have to rely completely on charitable donations and your own fundraising effot?

Eniko Kocsis: 13:04

So we are a charity, as you mentioned it. So our families I can talk a little bit about. You know how it's funded in children's service and then I can expand afterwards. So our families have zero to three-year-olds, so those families got free access to our service. So obviously the whole of our early intervention group will need to be funded through our fundraising efforts, which is events, community funding, corporate and trust and grants applications. Then we can have access to early education funding like any offset registered nursery.

Eniko Kocsis: 13:43

But that is minimal, that doesn't cover our costs at all. And then we have got parental contributions for our school-age children. But then again we ask parents to contribute £30 towards the true cost of one session. But the true cost of a session is £127. 

Eniko Kocsis: 14:10

And the only local authority funding we get towards the full costs is through the educational health care needs assessments and then the plans where conductive education is included in the child's educational health care plan under Section F. And then the parents choose us as the provider of that conductive education and in that case we're able to charge the local authority the full costs of those sessions. But at the moment which is an absolute great success 10% of our children population in the Rainbow Centre now receive full costs because they are included in their educational healthcare plan. And that's through the work I have done with James Pantling-Skeet from your team. And then we work together closely to secure these successes and we're looking forward to carrying working together because we know that many parents would like to have conductive education included in the child's EHCP. In terms of our adults population, again, you know they have a contribution towards the true costs, so a two hour session costs them £37, which obviously doesn't cover costs at all. But other than that we get no statutory funding at all.

Lindsay Da Rè: 15:17

So you have to meet the shortfall in that from your own fundraising efforts. So what could people who might want to support the Rainbow Centre and help you make conductive education available more widely do to help you?

Eniko Kocsis: 15:31

So we have got events going on so they can visit our website and look at what events we have. Individuals can set up a fundraising page if they wanted to in terms of birthday fundraising, if they don't want to do anything particular a challenge. We have got corporate events as well across the year which they can join in. So I know that quite a lot of the people from Boyes Turner attended some of our events, such as the ball, for example, last year.

L Lindsay Da Rè: 15:59

how can people contact you if they want to either get involved in supporting the Rainbow Centre or access conductive education?

Eniko Kocsis: 16:04

So if people want to get in touch with us, then they can visit our website, which we're constantly updating, and we just recently updated it with the latest events, so that's worth having a look, because it's up there. So that's www.rainbowcentre.org.

Lindsay Da Rè: 16:22

Thank you so much for joining me today, Eniko, and telling us a bit more about the Rainbow Centre and about conductive education in general. It's been lovely speaking with you. 

Eniko Kocsis: 16:30

Thank you for having me, Lindsay. 

Lindsay Da Rè: 16:32

So if anyone is interested in more information about conductive education, then please do contact the Rainbow Centre. Or for advice about the support that's available for people living with brain injuries or other disabilities, either in managing their financial affairs, accessing appropriate community care, obtaining an education, health and care plan or bringing a claim for medical negligence or personal injury that may have led to their disability, then please get in touch with Boyes Turner. All the details of how you can contact us can be found on our website.