It is with sadness that we report that Sarah Duffen has died peacefully in her home in Devon. Sarah and her family were instrumental in inspiring the groundbreaking research that led to our work over the past 45 years.
Sarah's father, Leslie, wrote to Professor Sue Buckley in 1979, describing how Sarah had begun to learn to read aged 3 years 6 months and by the age of 7 years had achieved a standardised reading age of 9 years. By 11 years, Sarah could read and understand complex sentences, could write sentences and spell correctly. Sarah enjoyed reading and read extensively. She attended a mainstream primary school.
At that time, expectations for children with Down syndrome were very low, and it was generally accepted that people with Down syndrome simply could not learn to read. Participation in mainstream education was virtually unheard of.
Sarah's achievements were a clear sign of just how wrong these assumptions were.
Leslie Duffen's observation that learning to read had helped Sarah's spoken language development was the spark that ignited over four decades of work to better understand language and reading and speech development for children with Down syndrome.
Leslie, Sarah and her mother Dilys, continued to support and inspire our work. Since 1979, their inspiration has helped to improve education for tens of thousands of young people with Down syndrome around the world.
There will be a Memorial Service on Thursday 4th September at 10.00am in St Michael's Church, Ilsington, Devon, to which all are welcome.
Professor Sue Buckley will present a tribute to Sarah and her family at the Memorial Service.
