President’s Report to LDA AGM
August 25, 2007
Professor Kevin Wheldall, President
1. Introduction. Please accept my apologies that I am unable to attend the AGM. This report is my last official function as President of LDA. I would like to take this opportunity of saying ‘thanks for having me’ and to express my sincere appreciation of the support and fellowship of my fellow Council members. It is my privilege to present to you a brief report on LDA Council activities over the past LDA year, 2006-2007, and to give you an overview of our current position.
2. Membership. Our current total membership stands at 524, just 8 down from last year, based mainly in Victoria (57 per cent) and Queensland (20 per cent). Just over 40 per cent of our members are ordinary members, and 27 per cent are consultant members
3. Financial situation. LDA has had a positive year from a financial perspective. The Organisation recorded an increased operating profit in 2006/2007 due mainly to the well-attended Conference held in Melbourne as well as to the effective budget management across each of the Committees. The strong financial status of LDA provides the opportunity for Council to consider undertaking relevant initiatives in the areas of promotion and lobbying consistent with the organisation’s aims. I would like to thank Hugh McCusker and Kerrie McMahon for their careful stewardship of the Association’s finances.
4. August Seminar. The LDA seminar held last weekend may be judged a huge success, with well over 100 attending. I would like to thank all of the members of LDA who contributed to the event. In particular, I would like to single out for special mention, our Secretary of LDA, Molly de Lemos, whose original idea the seminar was and who worked so hard to make the event such a success. Molly’s idea for the seminar has clearly proved enormously popular and she has surely proved that there is indeed an audience within LDA who are keen to hear thought provoking and penetrating commentary from some of the best minds in our discipline. There will always, of course, be a need for professional, skills-based PD for practitioners. But there is also a clear, and previously largely unmet, appetite for more academic and more conceptually orientated presentations.
5. Award winners. I would like to take this opportunity of congratulating again out two Award winners for 2007: Professor Max Coltheart who received the Mona Tobias Award; and Dr Gary Woolley, who received the Tertiary Student Award.
6. Publications. On the LDA publications front, I would like to thank
Dr Molly de Lemos and Dr Louise Ellis for their editorial work on the Bulletin and Dr Alison Madelaine for her editorial work with me on AJLD. The Bulletin will shortly be back on track, with a double issue (numbers 2 and 3 for 2007) currently at the printers. Our journal, however, was falling so far behind publications schedule that, as we foreshadowed last year, we reluctantly decided to reduce the frequency from four to two issues per year. This is entirely due to our not receiving sufficient quality articles to publish. The good news is that we are currently exchanging contracts with Taylor and Francis, the international journal publishers, to take over publication of the journal from 2008. The first issue for 2007 is currently with the designers for layout, prior to printing. Another exciting piece of news is that we are now branching out into DVD production. We arranged for the LDA Seminar to be recorded and it will be edited into shape and made available to members and others as a DVD.
7. Consultants. Consultant members currently number 145, slightly down on last year’s count, as a number of resignations occurred and only 11 new consultant members joined. The Referral Service received 542 referrals to date this year. Members of the two consultants’ committees have been busy with reviewing and publishing both the consultants handbook “Guidelines for Consultant Members” and the Code of Ethics. Three professional development activities were organized and attended by both consultant and non-consultant members during the year. As always, I would like to thank Rosemary Carter for her leadership on the consultancy front.
8. Website. The website is continually updated by members of Council committees and contains current information about LDA activities. It includes notification of conferences, seminars, LDA Award winners, meetings and publications. A Members’ Only section includes strategies for helping students. It can be seen from the number of visits to the site that a growing number of members and others are seeking information from the webpage. There have been 1221 visitors to the new, revamped LDA website since it was launched in December 2005, an average of 58 visits per month. I would like to thank Jan Heffernan for her expert coordination of the site.
9. Last Year’s conference. It is just one year since the last LDA National Conference, which was organized and conducted by Victorian consultant members took place. I thanked the organisers at last year’s AGM held at the conference, but would like to report that an audience of 156 delegates attended, with a profit for LDA of $11,000. Work is proceeding on this year’s Conference in Brisbane hosted jointly by the Remedial and Support Teachers Association of Queensland, SPELD Queensland and LDA.
10. Thanks. Finally, I would like to thank Council for their work on behalf of LDA over the year. The survival and continuing success of LDA is due entirely to the efforts of this small band of volunteers who work on behalf of members, giving freely of their time and experience.