Publications and Research

Peer-reviewed publications and research contributing to the fields of Specific Learning Difficulties (dyslexia), education, and advocacy.

Publication

Evidence-based support for children and young people with additional needs: The Roadmap.

Bowen, C., Snow, P. and Brandon, P. (2026) Evidence-based support for children and young people with additional needs: The Roadmap. London: J&R Press.

ISBN 978-1-907826-54-2

The Roadmap:

Some books arrive quietly. Evidence-based support for children and young people with additional needs: The Roadmap makes you stop and pay attention.

This is a practical, evidence-based guide for children and young people with additional needs, written by Caroline Bowen and Pamela Snow, with Philippa Brandon. It is grounded in what research actually tells us, not slogans, trends or wishful thinking. The explanations are careful, the claims are restrained, and the focus stays on what helps in real classrooms and real homes. There is a welcome absence of neurobollocks, misused neuroscience and outright snake oil.

I was delighted to be asked to write the foreword. I opened it with the words of Stephen Hawking:

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.”

I recommend Evidence-based support for children and young people with additional needs: The Roadmap from the perspective of a long-standing parent advocate who has seen first-hand the cost of decisions that are not grounded in evidence. The authors genuinely respect families. They assume parents can understand the evidence when it is explained clearly, and they take that responsibility seriously. They do not oversell or oversimplify. They name where practice has drifted from evidence and explain why it matters, without blaming families for systemic failures.

As a parent advocate, I have spent years reading reports, sitting in meetings, and watching families carry the consequences of decisions they did not make. This book gives parents and educators a shared, evidence-based reference point, long overdue.

To support readers further, the authors have also shared a free Roadmap glossary.

It has been made available by Caroline Bowen and Pamela Snow, and can be downloaded, saved for reference, and shared with others who may find it useful:
https://speech-language-therapy.com/images/roadmapglossary.pdf
https://pamelasnow.blogspot.com/2025/01/evidence-based-support-for-children-and.html

Research

Parents’ stress and satisfaction with dyslexia assessment and diagnosis in Australia

Authors: Hayley Anthony, Andrea Reupert, Louise McLean, Aspasia Stacey Rabba, & Heidi Gregory
Journal: Educational and Developmental Psychologist (2025)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/20590776.2025.2545250

This study explored the experiences of 80 Australian parents during their child’s dyslexia diagnosis. Parents valued the professionalism of practitioners and the clarity of reports, but identified major gaps in affordability, timeliness, post-diagnosis support, and school response.

Key findings:

Assessments are seen as professional and useful, but costly.
Timely diagnosis is often hard to access.
Parents feel unsupported once the diagnosis is given.
Schools do not consistently act on assessment recommendations.

What needs to change:

Make assessments affordable and accessible.
Speed up the diagnostic process.
Provide clear, parent-friendly information at diagnosis.
Ensure structured follow-up support for families.
Improve school responses to reports and recommendations.