Our journey so far

Inspired by Sophie Dow, EQ IQ is incorporated as a Charity based in Scotland with the purpose of raising awareness of the conditions that give rise to learning difficulties.

Mindroom was announced as our new name at a major international conference, ‘See The Bigger Picture’. Held at the EICC, it attracted over 800 delegates from home and overseas.

Our Direct Help and Support Service was formed to provide direct one-to-one support and advice to children, young people and their families.

Mindroom, supported by Royal Mail, completed a survey finding 17% of children in Scotland have additional support needs, compared with official figures of 4%. Results were presented at a Parliamentary Reception alongside a major policy campaign to highlight the challenges in identifying and supporting children with learning difficulties.

After the success of our earlier conferences, in 2011 we held our third conference No Mind Left Behind in collaboration with Prof. Christopher Gillberg. 52 world experts addressed 1,000 delegates from 23 countries about autism, ADHD and other early onset neurodevelopmental disorders.

An important year for Mindroom.

We delivered The Brain is Wider than the Sky exhibition, in collaboration with Edinburgh University’s Patrick Wild Centre.

Alastair and Elizabeth Salvesen commit to major donation to support Mindroom and our collaboration with Edinburgh University.

Mindroom is renamed the Salvesen Mindroom Centre, collaborating closely with the Salvesen Mindroom Research Centre at Edinburgh University.

It Takes All Kinds of Minds

We launched 5 short films based on our booklet on autism, ADHD, DCD, Dyslexia and Tourette Syndrome featuring children and young people we support.

The booklet has been printed and distributed over 600,000 times.

Three key words, Support-Inform-Empower are embraced to reflect the essence of our outreach work.

We published our guide, Building Effective Relationships, to help young people, families and teachers work together.

We adapted our services to ride out the pandemic and continue to support, inform and empower while working from home.

In 9 months, we embraced a digital transformation underpinned by a donation from Imlay Foundation including a new website, new outreach products and new marketing and communications initiatives.

Everything achieved during the past 21 years has been a collaborative team effort involving individual donors, Trusts, national and local government, academic organisations, companies, suppliers, pro-bono supporters, employees, freelance workers, advisers, trustees, volunteers, professionals, parents, carers, children, their families and well-wishers of all kinds.

We hope you’ll continue to support our journey over the next 21 years!

Donate