The halfway point of the year means it’s time for another message from Rhodri Lathey about the Owl Centre which provides a range of therapy services for children across many parts of England, and in South Wales it offers Speech and Language therapy, Music therapy and Play therapy through home and school (or nursery) visits.
For anyone who isn’t aware, this blog began a partnership with the Owl Centre at the start of the year and is proud to work in conjunction with such a fine cause – here is Rhodri’s latest report on it’s work;-
“The reason behind The Owl Centre’s involvement with this blog.
The Owl Centre was founded in Oxford, and whereas in the past we have sponsored sports teams (for example, we sponsored a junior football team in a fairly deprived part of Oxford, buying them their kit for the season), there’s no obvious link between a company that provides therapy services for children and a Cardiff City F.C. blog (except for the fact that we now also provide therapy services in South Wales). As such, I’ll briefly set out the reason behind the partnership.
My father, Philip Lathey, who is a fellow director of The Owl Centre, is a huge Cardiff City fan. He has been supporting the side for 66 years, having first been taken to Ninian Park by his father (my grandfather) at the age of 7 years old. Indeed, his father had been taken to Ninian Park by his father (my great grandfather), and so, as long as Cardiff City has been in existence, one of my family members has been supporting the club. I, myself, have been to a number of the matches (in fact, many years ago, when my father and I were driving around Northern Europe on holiday, we stopped off at Liege where, ‘by chance’, Cardiff were playing and my father had tickets for us!).
As a huge fan, my father not only travels to all of the games, home and away, he also occasionally attends pre-season matches (in Britain and abroad) and youth fixtures. But he also avidly reads newspaper and website reports on the City. It’s in this respect that The Owl Centre became involved with Paul’s blog. For my father has always said that when he reads Paul’s reports, he reads the game that he saw. This contrasts with many other reports which seem alien to him. But Paul and he seem to be on the same wavelength. As such, when my father heard that the blog needed some funding to help with the overhead costs of running the site, The Owl Centre was very happy to contribute in order to keep the blog going.
As for Owl Centre news, we have recently provided assessments for 100 patients (50 adults and 50 children) for an NHS trust in Manchester, many of whom had been on a waiting list for over 2 years. Even with delays created by NHS stipulations surrounding data protection, we managed to complete the project in under 3 months, and, in some cases, we were able to assess and feed back to the patient, and provide them with a comprehensive diagnostic report, within 2 weeks. To receive so much positive feedback about how our help had transformed the lives of some of these patients made it an incredibly worthwhile project for our team.
Good luck to the City for the forthcoming season, and let’s hope they will be back in the Premiership by this time next year.”
Thank you Rhodri and thanks too to Philip for his kind words.
