Memorial Trust
15 Queen’s Gate Terrace
London SW7 5PR
Email office@wcmt.org.uk Telephone 020 7584 9315
Facsimile 020 7581 0410
Registered Charity No.313952
Background |
The Fellowship |
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1998 Development of language assessment for bilingual children |
As a clinician specialising in bilingualism and multilingualism, one of the biggest challenges I faced was trying to ascertain whether a child had a language disorder or had an English as a second language learning difficulty. Assessments in Britain were mainly standardised on monolingual English speaking samples and therefore were not an adequate resource for children who spoke more than one language.
Having identified a gap in the market, particularly for speakers of languages from the Indian sub continent, and realising that clinicians in India dealt with such issues on a daily basis I carried out my Fellowship at the Institute of Speech and Hearing in Bangalore, India and also had the opportunity to work at the Institute of Languages in Mysore. I took various language assessments from India and with my knowledge of British/Asian culture and language development adapted and developed assessment tools for use in Britain. |
The Results |
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The Winston Churchill Fellowship helped me to develop my professional and personal skills and I believe that the diverse range of experiences I had whilst abroad (including having my passport stolen, adapting to new styles of communication, developing patience as the pace of life then was much slower in India and developing relationships in a totally new and very different environment) have contributed to the success I have achieved in my career since. The Winston Churchill Fellowship gave me the confidence and tenacity to recognise opportunities and grasp them. This has enabled me to work for a wide portfolio of organisations and in a variety of roles including advising Ministers in Whitehall, receiving a personal invitation from the Prime Minister to Downing Street for the Millennium Lectures, being appointed as the highest ranking Indian women in Policing, being recognised as one of the top ten Historical and BME role models for Cambridgeshire (sharing a platform with Thandie Newton, actress; John Tucker Mugabi Sentamu, the first Black Archbishop of York; and Olaudah Equiano an African writer whose experiences as a slave prompted him to become involved in the British abolition movement) and in my current role, being headhunted and appointed as the Chief Executive of Waterhouse Consulting Group. As well as developing and impacting positively on my own skills, North Warwickshire NHS Trust, my employer at the time of my Fellowship, benefited immensely too - the senior management team were held in high esteem and serious about staff development. The Fellowship also supported organisational endeavours to be an employer of choice. The Fellowship impacted positively on many of my colleagues, friends and family who had not considered such possibilities might be available to them and went on to look at similar opportunities. The Winston Churchill Fellowship is an opportunity of a lifetime and well worth considering and applying to. Having the courage to imagine I may be a successful applicant, the determination to seize that opportunity and the focus to make it a chance of a lifetime has in turn made a huge difference to my life and also impacted positively upon those around me...and in the words of Winston Churchill himself "Courage is the first of human qualities, because it is the quality which guarantees all others." |
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