Even in the current situation, the work of the Owl Centre, the education provides that have an association with this blog, carries on – here is Rhodri’s latest report which also contains an appreciation of Peter Whittingham.
“Those who have read one of my updates in the past will know that my father, Philip Lathey, has been a Cardiff City fan for 67 years. When he thinks about his favourite players throughout that time, names such as Trevor Ford, Graham Moore, Steve Gammon, John Toshack and Ivor Allchurch come to his mind. However, another Cardiff legend that he adds to this list is Peter Whittingham, and it is so sad that Whitts’ life has been cut so terribly short. My father believes that his like won’t be seen again, certainly not in my father’s lifetime, for whereas there are some people who make easy jobs look difficult, Whitts managed to do the opposite.
Football aside, I’ll just write a few words about how the coronavirus problem has impacted on The Owl Centre.
As a company which provides therapy services to children and adults, the lockdown had an immediate negative effect. No longer permitted to provide face to face input (except to patients categorised as vulnerable), we had to scramble to put in place a new system which would enable continuity of treatment as far as possible. In fact, suspecting that the lockdown would be inevitable, we asked our IT developers in advance to create a secure platform for online therapy, which they did with great speed and technical know-how. As a result, an offering for online therapy has now been fully integrated into our website (www.theowltherapycentre.co.uk) and into our backend processes, and the results have been surprisingly good. A number of parents with children with low level autism, for example, who had assumed that online therapy simply wouldn’t work, have fed back that it’s going great! We’re really pleased about this, and the hope is, therefore, that online therapy can become a core part of our service even after the government’s restrictions have been lifted, which will enable us to offer many different types of therapy to places in Britain and further afield that we don’t currently cover.
This development aside, we are using this downtime as productively as possible, so that, by the time life returns to normal (and it will!), we’ll be able to provide a better experience for our clients. We’re pressing on with many IT developments, creating new service offerings, providing training programmes for our therapists, and so on. In a way, our current undertakings are like pre-season fitness training, and we aim to be in peak fitness by the time the season kicks off!
Unfortunately, and to return to football, whereas we should be starting to get ready now for our trip to Azerbaijan for the Euros, this has had to be put on hold. However, we have kept the tickets for next year, and are sure it’ll be worth the wait.
All of us here at The Owl Centre hope that Paul’s readers are managing to fill the gap left by football (and life as we know it) currently being on hold. Here’s looking forward to the resumption of play!”
Can I also add that I will be keeping an eye out for interesting features on Cardiff City which may have slipped your attention while there is no football being played – if you have the time, this podcast featuring an interview with Joe Ledley is well worth a listen.
