Beyond Words books are discussed in book club groups which have been established in many local libraries. City Lit’s Learning Centre in Covent Garden will be starting two new book clubs in 2017 and will be among the first to use the new resources. During the first months of the pandemic, Public Health England reported that individuals with learning disabilities were at greater risk of dying from COVID-19. With the roll-out of the winter booster programme starting earlier than planned due to the newly-identified Pirola variant, there remains an urgent need to encourage people to take up their vaccines, and help them understand the benefits. Betty is a New Caledonian crow who uses previous experience to reason through problems. Having learned what a hook is, she bends straight wire into hooks to reach food deep inside tubes. Presented with an array of wires, Betty chooses the correct length and diameter for the task before her." Jo Egerton, Barry Carpenter and Sheila Hollins share the work and findings of The Open Book Project. People who can’t read or who don’t like written words are often very good at reading pictures. We call this visual literacy, and it’s the reason why there are no words in our picture stories.

We are delighted to be once again partnering with our friends at City Lit to host the Mental Wealth Festival. This year the festival focuses on connections, exploring ways that connection supports and enhances mental health and wellbeing and celebrating the numerous ways in which we connect with others, ourselves, and the world around us. A female killer whale in Peuget Sound playing with her three-year daughter. Children are rare in this salmon eating species in decline, and this one was killed accidentally by naval practice gunnery or demolition

Book of the week

I'm not suggesting that humans and elephants have all the same emotions. Self-loathing seems uniquely human." Dr Helena Wythe, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire, explains why this kind of resource is so important to invest in: “Thankfully, we saw a high uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine across the community here in Hertfordshire. However, it’s not just about the number of vaccines in people’s arms. It’s important that people with learning disabilities aren’t shut out of the conversation around vaccines, but understand why they are so important and play an active part in these kind of healthcare decisions. If you've ever sat and admired Discovery Channel, been at the zoo and stared at the animals wondering what they were thinking or feeling, get this book. As humans we find ourselves so superior. And yes, we can be. But we lose sight of the givingness and gorgeousness of the natural world of animals. And what we can gain and learn from them.

Employment advisers will visit the Beyond Words’ book clubs to use the new books and help members explore volunteering and work. People with learning disabilities will be trained as a national network of peer supporters to work with the clubs.

He interviews biologists. He conducts field observations. He travels to Africa and Yellowstone National Park, and the Pacific coast between the United States and Canada. He talks to many specialists. In one particularly good section of the book, Safina recounted his days at university, sitting in the classroom listening to lectures on the evils of anthropomorphizing animal's actions. I too have sat in lectures along with myriad undergrads and grads who heard largely the same thing Safina did. It is bored into our brains that since we cannot speak the same language, we cannot ask animals what they think and feel, and thus it a sacrilege to anthropomorphize their actions. After all, we can only observe actions, not thoughts or feelings. We must take caution in our interpretation of these actions. Safina agrees with this but suggests that in fact the professors themselves have made assumptions. Safina claims it is just as wrong to assume they do not have emotions and feelings similar to humans. If we can only measure behaviors, then Safina cautions, just stop there. No need to come to unfounded conclusions that since humans can't observe a feeling or thought, that it does not exist. Great argument. It took me a week to read the book. I had to put it down frequently, mostly because of the stories about how we've decimated the populations of these three species and many more. How we've tortured so many of them and said that it doesn't matter as they don't have feelings like we do. Not to mention our effect on the environment, which leaves little room for creatures other than us. For me, it was nothing new but nonetheless excruciating to read about.

References: Department for Education (DfE)/Department of Health (DH) (2015) SEND Code of Practice: 0–25 years. London: DfE. Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)/Department for Education (DfE) (2017) Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision (Green Paper). London: DfE. Emerson, E. and Hatton, C. (2007) The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents with Learning Disabilities in Britain. London: Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities/ Lancaster University. Hollins, S., Roth, T. and Webb, B. (2015) Making Friends (2nd edn). London: Books Beyond Words. National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) (2008) Promoting Children’s Social and Emotional Wellbeing in Primary Education. London: NICE.Over the next 22 years, the creative storytelling process and way of reading the books was developed and thoroughly evaluated under the joint guidance of Sheila as Editor with Managing Editor, Dorothea Duncan. Nigel and other volunteers with learning disabilities were deeply involved throughout. For some of this time, the series was co-published with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and the books’ use was professionally led, being used mainly within the NHS as well as in psychotherapy. This is a stunning book, the section on killer whales a true revelation—and as Safina himself points out, since the study of the behaviour, emotions, intelligence and consciousness of our fellow creatures is such a relatively new field (mere decades, barely begun) there are more revelations to come. And yet, surprisingly perhaps given its subject, Beyond Words is not an angry book; it’s remarkably restrained—albeit through gritted teeth at times when describing some of the grosser idiocies and atrocities routinely perpetrated on other animals by us. Join our panellists for a live Beyond Words book club, exploring what visual literacy is and how pictures can provoke sharing, stories and feelings. While our panel goes through a word-free picture book, our audience will be encouraged to watch and share their own insights, emotions and stories. Led by Beyond Words Founder Professor Sheila the Baroness Hollins. Book now. Gary Butler, Self Advocate and Trainer with Beyond Words and St George’s, University of London, said:“Working makes me feel good, it gives me independence and helps pay the bills.These new books will be good to help other people achieve what I have” Earlier this year Beyond Words started a brand-new, free training course with our friends at City Lit in London to equip people with learning disabilities with the core skills to be co-trainers on our book club training programme.

The efforts to get to know these species in their natural state in the wild are confounded by stresses and losses due to impacts of mankind. More and more what gets observed by their long-term monitors is angle both on pathology and resilient adaptation to changes in their environment, food sources, and unnecessary deaths of key family leaders. The social devastation to family structure and survival is covered in examples from each species in the aftermath a losses of the matriarch. In the case of elephant and wolf examples, the parks in Kenya and Yellowstone are too small to protect species whose range goes outside park and, for elephants, do not a sufficient barrier to poaching. The continuing decline of killer whales in the Pacific Northwest reflects loss of their salmon prey, pollution such as lead, boating or fishing accidents, or adverse impacts of naval operations such as from sonar blasts or demolition (as many as ten species specialize in different food prey, such as seals among their Arctic cousins). As we can see clearly from Safina’s narrative the loss of key family members can mean death to a whole family from the disruption of missing leadership, cultural knowledge, and the emotional center for adults and infants alike. He emphasizes how we need to be aware of these consequences and hopefully get more serious about halting the continuing decline in each species’ populations still going after reductions of 90% or more in their numbers and ranges over the last couple of hundred years.For the people watching them over the years, the animals’ individual personalities shine through no less than what we experience with our own pets. And their personalities seem obviously critical to their success or challenges in the social roles they assume. Yes, we get a special amplification of social memory and abstract communication with human language, but is this capability a difference in degree or a qualitative leap above particularly brainy animals? Though animals may have a pretty extensive range of communication calls and signals and primitive levels of syntax and generativity when taught symbolic modes of communicating with humans, what stands out is their ability to “read” each others’ intentions and feelings without words. And touch is a persistent and universal mode of sharing emotions and social cohesion among the three species (as well as dolphins and primates). Of course nobody really knows what is conveyed in the rich sonar and aural productions of Cetaceans, the howling of wolves, the recently discovered complex vocalizations of elephants in the low frequency range below human hearing, and the repertoire of gestures being uncovered among gorillas and other apes.