Young Service Missionary and Family Present at International NAPLIC Conference
On Saturday 27th April 2024, Elder Ioan Berry, a currently serving service missionary in the England Birmingham Mission, alongside his mum, Imogen, and his older brother, Jotham, were invited by internationally acclaimed speech and language therapist and chair of NAPLIC, Stephen Parsons, to give a 40-minute presentation on “Living with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) – A Family Perspective.” Over 200 delegates who were university academics, professionals working with people with DLD and families living with DLD were in attendance.
“‘Developmental Language Disorder’ (DLD) is identified when children, young people or adults have difficulties with understanding the language they hear or speaking in sentences to express meaning. It is a lifelong condition.
DLD can be used to describe the condition if there is no other cause for the language difficulties, such as autism.” (NAPLIC)
Elder Berry spoke first and described his experience of growing up with DLD and what support has helped and hindered in this. He spoke about his service mission and how this has helped him grow in confidence. He also shared a link to a video he made during COVID lockdown describing DLD (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXHCjk_FCI4).
Imogen spoke about the journey to access support, language therapy and specialist education for Ioan and the 42 professionals who have been involved with Ioan’s success.
Jotham then gave a sibling perspective, and how he has supported Elder Berry as protector and advocate. Jotham was also able to speak about serving his mission in the Scotland Ireland Mission, and how his experience of growing up with a neurodiverse brother had helped him be more understanding of companions who had ADHD and Autism. Jotham also gave a report on his dissertation for his MSc degree in Occupational Psychology, in which he spoke to adults with DLD and assessed reasonable adjustments that could be made in the workplace to enable adults with DLD to succeed and thrive. Professor Courtenay Norbury from UCL, who attended the conference, is supporting Jotham in having his research paper published.
At the end of the conference, delegates were asked to complete an evaluation, and many replied that their highlight of the day was the Berry family presentation. Below is a summary of the conference compiled by Stephen Parsons:
https://www.naplic.org.uk/category/conferences/#:~:text=Recently%20the%20NAPLIC%20annual%20conference,secondary%20education%20into%20young%20adulthood.
The family were approached by various delegates over the course of the day. Elder Berry has been invited to speak to other professionals in Devon next summer and to provide an article for the nationally circulated Speechlink magazine. Many attendees wanted to talk to the family about DLD, but a number approached to talk specifically about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a lot of information about service missions was shared.