About Us

Vision of shine

To ensure that every child, their families and teachers understand what needs to be done to overcome Language and Learning Disabilities, to ensure every child gets an opportunity to overcome his/ her problem.

Purpose of foundation

SHINE a division of the Andrew Dean Fildes Foundation aims to assist people in overcoming Language- Learning Disabilities by offering the following activities.

• To provide Screening Programs for young children to ensure that they have adequate hearing, vision, speech, language, and literacy skills to ensure they can develop normally and learn.
• To provide comprehensive assessments of speech, language, and literacy skills to provide a proper diagnosis, seek funding for support, and to assist in establishing appropriate teaching and therapy treatment goals.
• To provide resources / materials and specialist programs (based on proper assessment) that can be used by parents / teachers / teacher assistants to improve the speech, language, and / or literacy skills of the child with a Language-Learning Disability.
• When appropriate, to provide intensive multidisciplinary treatment programs for children with Language-Learning Disabilities.
• To provide educational programs for teachers, teacher assistants, and professionals on the nature, cause, consequences, and treatments for Language-Learning Disabilities.
• To provide information programs for parents and young people with Language-Learning Disabilities to assist them in understanding the nature, cause, and treatment options for people with Language-Learning Disabilities.
• To assist parents to establish support groups in their local community for parents and children with Language-Learning Disabilities.

4 Basic dot points discribing the shine foundation

• It’s all about the children.
• 30 hours can make the difference between ability and disability.
• The child who believes, can achieve.
• Finally there is a voice and a path for the future.“Join us in building on a decade of free services to the community”.

ESTABLISHMENT OF FOUNDATION: Was foundered in 1996, by founder Andrew Dean Fildes who has a language-learning disability. His story can be found in testimonial section.

Language-learning disabilities effect on lives

It is estimated that about 10% of the Australian population has a Language-Learning Disability which affects self-esteem, confidence, learning potential, employment options, and lifetime opportunities.

The seriousness of such difficulties is hard to exaggerate. Unless the child's problem is dealt with in an adequate manner, what awaits him or her is problematic. Research has shown that many adults with learning disabilities are underemployed, often stuck in dead-end jobs that do not tap into their true vocational potential. Many others are not finding employment at all. They are unsuccessful in their pursuit of further training, and few are accessing the services that have been developed to serve them. Many young adults with LLDs have major academic and vocational needs that make it hard for them to live independent lives.

The figures on the salary cheque, however, might not be the only concern. People who cannot read can also not read instructions on a bottle of prescription medicine, look up numbers in a telephone directory, or read the menu in a restaurant. Being unable to read traffic signs and street names, or maps on long journeys, they cannot travel freely. They cannot read the letters that their children bring home from their teachers or help them with homework. They cannot write to friends or read for pleasure. In fact, they are severely isolated in a reading world. If they can read, they are often extremely slow and will spend twice as much time trying to read something compared to their reading peers, and even then they may not understand everything they read—so they put in twice the effort for minimal return. Often, if they are receiving any help for reading they are treated as “slow”, “lazy”, or “uninterested” and they receive their treatment in a boring drill and practice style that takes them away from activities they are good at and from interacting with friends or doing leisure activities. So in every sense, they are being punished.

Choice, in all its facets, is diminished in the life of the reading-disabled person. Being unable to read important information in print, he or she can't make an informed decision.

LLDs can have destructive emotional effects. Persistent learning failure leads to anguish, embarrassment and frustration. There is something terrifying about sitting at the back of the class and having somebody ask you questions which you know you will never be able to answer. In describing his feelings about growing up with a learning disability, one boy identified the frustration of not being able to do what other children do easily, the humiliation of being thought not too bright when such is not the case at all.

For some the humiliation becomes too much. One research study found that over 50 percent of all suicides under age fifteen had been previously diagnosed as having learning disabilities. In another study researchers analysed all the available suicide notes (n = 27) from 267 consecutive adolescent suicides for spelling and handwriting errors. The results showed that 89 percent of the twenty-seven adolescents who committed suicide had significant deficits in spelling and handwriting that were similar to those of adolescents with LLD.

Behaviour problems resulting from their negative experiences are not uncommon in LLD youngsters. The strain and the frustration of underachieving can cause them to be reluctant to go to school, to throw temper tantrums before school or in some cases to refuse to attend. Cheating, stealing and experimenting with drugs can also result when children regard themselves as failures. Results from studies have demonstrated that youths with LLD were 200 percent more likely to be arrested than non-LLD peers for comparable offences. It is believed that about 60 percent of prison inmates are illiterate and 85 percent of all juvenile offenders have reading problems.

Since it brings such devastation in the lives of so many children, no stone may be left unturned to eradicate language-learning disabilities.

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