Mary Atkinson qualified as a Dyslexia Therapist at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London in 1979 and has since taught many hundreds of dyslexic children and those with related and similar problems.
The inadequacies of other materials on the market such as workbooks with only one page for a rule, or reading schemes that advance too quickly, spurred Mary into distilling her knowledge and self-prepared materials into book form.
All the contents of these books, the worksheets, games, stories, etc., have been "road tested" and are known to work.Mary subsequently trained at the Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology (I.N.P.P.) as a Neuro-Developmental Therapist and ran the Maypole Centre treating children with neuro-developmental delay causing specific learning difficulties, and teaching pre-school literacy. She is now retired.
Glinette Woods had already worked in the prison service, a psychiatric hospital and a children's home before embarking on a teaching career. She taught all ages in two special schools for children with moderate learning difficulties, a pre-school diagnostic unit and spent fifteen years teaching in and running a primary unit for children with Speech, Language and Communication needs(SLCN). She is now an advisory teacher for children with SLCN.Glinette was a member of the team who produced the Joint Professional Development Framework funded by the DfES and assisted ICAN in producing a course package for the foundation stage of that framework.
Glinette is currently on the committee of the National Association of Professionals involved in Language Impairment in Children (NAPLIC) and edited their newsletter for several years.
She has been involved in inset training for many years and has spoken at several conferences and seminars.
Glinette has an honours degree in psychology, a postgraduate teaching certificate and the Diploma for Teachers of Children with SLCN.
Deborah Acors worked for eight years in a bank reaching managerial status before training as a nursery nurse.
She then spent ten years as a special support assistant in a unit for primary children with speech and language difficulties.Deborah has a first class honours degree in Linguistics and Psycho-social Studies and a postgraduate teaching certificate (PGCE).
She is now teaching in a primary school.
Clare Argent-Hall was the sounding board for Mary Atkinson's stories in the Fat Tom Series and produced some original ideas which led to her being credited as co-author.