New start for dyslexia support group

A SUPPORT group has been relaunched in Oban to help people with dyslexia reach their full potential.

Oban councillor Roddy McCuish was at the event at the town’s library on World Book Night last week to give his support alongside Argyll and Bute Council’s adult literacy and numeracy development officer Brian Marden.

Councillor McCuish told the newly-revived group’s first meeting that he was dyslexic but had not been diagnosed when he was at school, ending up as ‘the class clown’.

He said: ‘I had an incredible talent for finding other ways round the dyslexia.

‘If help had been there for me at that time, things would have been very different for me.’

And he added: ‘The work of this group is vital to the town. It’s vital to our children and to adults.

‘Dyslexia is not an illness. It’s just a different way of looking at things.

‘The encouragement is here at this group, the support is here. Please use it.’

Tina Scorgie’s dyslexia was only diagnosed when Open University tutors advised her to get tested.

She got involved in a dyslexia support group in Oban but found numbers dwindled low when children, whose parents had been involved, grew up and left school.

She said that the need for a support group was still there, but having been done differently in the past, it was in danger of folding.

‘That would have been a shame,’ she said.

Now with help from the charity Dyslexia Scotland and others from the group there are plans for the Oban branch to meet four times a year to get more people together with a view to organising other events and talks.

Anyone interested in getting involved should email lena@dyslexiascotland. org.uk

Dyslexia Scotland has a helpline on

03448 008484.