Staff and Volunteers
Anne Worsfold, Executive DirectorAnne has taught hundreds of people to cue and has given numerous presentations about Cued Speech – including some international presentations. She is the parent of two deaf children, now young adults, who were brought up with Cued Speech, and has been the Executive Director of the Cued Speech Association UK since 1999. During that time the numbers of people trained has risen significantly, a wide range of new information materials has been created and a successful 3-year National Awareness Campaign has been completed.
Anne has a background and qualifications in general and personnel management. She also worked on charter yachts in the Caribbean and Aegean and has sailed the Atlantic, activities which she says taught her resilience and gave her the ability to communication with anyone regardless of their language or background. Click here to contact Anne. 
Kim Fricker, Course Co-ordinator
Kim was invaluable as part-time Admin Secretary for her first 6 years with the charity. In 2006, she started to work full-time and her job title was changed to match her role as Course Co-ordinator.
If you have any query about Cued Speech training courses, contact Kim. She finds venues, organises tutors and crèche staff and takes bookings both for our Exeter residential courses and for those around the country. She currently has several Cued Speech courses lined up including the ever popular yearly residential Summer School in Exeter where Kim’s role turns into something resembling a ‘Butlins Rep’ with rounders and boat trips a regular feature! Kim relishes the challenge of organising more courses, and has various places on her hit list, so if you are interested in learning Cued Speech, give her a call or click here to email her.
Kim started her working life in television in the field of public relations for Westward Television and Television South West in Plymouth during which time she liaised with the public, dealt with viewers’ correspondence and monitored programme feedback. She also attended county shows and made public appearances with the station’s top TV mascot, the stuffed rabbit, Gus Honeybun who, in his cat basket, spent many a day in Kim’s car boot! Kim left the world of TV after 7½ years to get married and move to London, and had a break from work whilst bringing up her two children. Kim also spent 10 years part-time running the small sub-office of a local paper as Receptionist and Sales Executive. In her spare time Kim has, over the years, played competitive tennis, and currently runs a local Table Tennis Club for adults and young people. 
Sue Tweed, Project Secretary/Fundraiser
Sue joined the Cued Speech Association in 2001 and began by working 2 mornings a week to help put together the new series of information sheets funded by the Info 2004 project. She subsequently took over the fundraising role and began writing appeal letters to charitable trusts and companies. Her job developed to become Project Secretary, increasing to 20 hours each week. She is now responsible for compiling project budgets, fundraising, and monitoring project outputs and outcomes, as well as helping out where needed – we work as a team and it’s all hands to the mill when there’s a job to be done!
Sue’s background is varied! She initially worked as a bank clerk for 3 years before joining the WRNS for 6 years. On leaving to get married, she missed the companionship of the Navy and joined the Royal Naval Reserves. She retired from the RNR in 2005 as a Commander after 26 years service and many enjoyable experiences both in the UK and in quite a few overseas countries, including 5 short tours of duty in Dubai helping to monitor the whereabouts of British interest merchant shipping in the Gulf.
After her WRNS service, Sue became a secretary in the commercial world, moving later into sales, first of financial products and then office stationery & equipment. She changed direction once again after marrying Graham in 1990 and moved into the world of care for special needs children and adults, working as a carer in a residential home for adults and then a respite home for children, and also as a play leader on holiday playschemes for 8 years. She was also a Magistrate in her local court in the West Midlands for 6 years until she and Graham moved to Devon in 2000 to ‘downsize’. Seeing a small ad in the local paper which looked interesting, she began working for the Cued Speech Association and has thoroughly enjoyed growing her skills and experiences along with the increasing development of the charity. Sue welcomes any help from anyone able to raise funds for the Cued Speech Association – from organising an event to helping to recycle printer cartridges – click here to email Sue.
Debbie Hawke, Administrator
Debbie has had a wide and varied work life in between bringing up 2 children! Her career has included paid posts arranging mortgages and working in the catering industry and two quite different self-employed businesses, fancy-dress hire (sold after 4 years when the costumes were in danger of taking over the family home) and a gardening business (which she continues to run part-time with a friend).
In addition she worked in a local community college for 6 years, mainly as a special needs teaching assistant but also teaching life skills to 14-year olds. Debbie has worked as part-time Administrator for the Cued Speech Association since April 2008. Click here to email Debbie.
Louise Creed
Louise joined the charity in November 2008 to job-share the role of Administrator with Debbie Hawke. Louise has a background mainly focused in the hospitality, health and fitness industry, taking on many different roles and responsibilities. She then switched her attention to the IT world where she spent many happy hours and days trying to make software work! After having her daughter and moving back to Dartmouth she can now be found in the Cued Speech office or leaping around a fitness studio teaching varying forms of exercise to music.
Cate Calder, Educational Development Officer
Cate has worked as a sign language interpreter for 17 years and developed a love for Cued Speech after working as an educational communicator for 6 years at the college department of the Royal West of England School for the Deaf in Exeter (now Exeter Royal Academy for Deaf Education (ERADE)). In her last year there she was asked to interpret for someone who used Cued Speech and after an enlightening afternoon on a beach with Sheila Skillings’ Cued Speech book - decided to give it a try. After some lessons with Sheila herself she got the basics but not – at that stage - the speed. Although she left the job shortly after, she kept her love of Cued Speech and an ambition to become skilled enough to one day transliterate properly.
Cate has CACDP Level 3 BSL and took part in the RNID Interpreter Development Programme. She worked as a freelance Community Sign Language Interpreter for over 10 years, interpreting in a wide range of situations including health, education, social services, employment and conference work. Cate’s other experience includes two years as a research assistant on a project which looked into the needs of, and services for, people with a sensory loss, managing a Social Services Resource Centre for deaf people and freelance community interpreting. For the last 15 years she has appeared on local television briefly each week interpreting the news headlines. In 1998 she married Matthew, an artist, and gave up work to follow him on a lecture tour of Canada and America. In 2001 their wonderful son Jacob was born.
Cate now has the Level 2 Certificate in Proficiency in Cued Speech and is an acclaimed tutor and Cued Speech Transliterator. She was employed as a part-time Information Officer for our National Awareness Campaign, working especially on communications with the signing Deaf Community.
Since mid-2006 she has been working principally at ERADE, teaching Cued English through the medium of BSL to students and teaching teachers and parents how to use Cued Speech. Current policy at the Academy is to aim for excellence in both English and British Sign Language. The term Cued English (CE) is used within the school to emphasise its use as a literacy tool and to ensure there is no confusion with speech therapy. The use of CE with older (up to age 18) signing deaf children, using BSL as the language of tuition (rather than using Cued Speech as a direct communication method in the first instance) is pretty ground breaking. The process has been dictated by the needs and wants of the students. The goal for the students who are part of the Cued English programme is for them to have unambiguous access to English through Cued Speech. This work continues to be very successful. Click here to contact Cate.
Freelance workers
We employ 5 freelance tutors UK-wide as needed for Cued Speech training courses. Several of these tutors also help us, together with other Cued Speech users, on a freelance basis to help give presentations, man exhibition stalls and in our crèche. Freelance workers include Sarah Collinson and Cate Calder, detailed above, and:
Paul-Michael Coldham
Paul-Michael has been a Cued Speech tutor since 2002 and is the busiest of our tutors, teaching courses across the UK. He holds the Level 1 and Level 2 certificate of proficiency in Cued Speech as well as teaching British Sign Language (Level 2 and 3). In February 2009, he also gained his qualification at Level 4 NVQ in British Sign Language at Manchester City College. He holds the City and Guilds 7307/1 Adult and Further Education Teacher Certificate, the new qualification ‘Preparing to Teach in the Life Long Learning Sector’ and is currently studying for the Certificate in Education at Lancaster University.
Paul-Michael has a slight hearing loss himself which can benefit from Cued Speech use, particularly in noisy settings, and his knowledge of the Deaf community assists him in promoting various aspects of Cued Speech tuition. He teaches hearing and deaf people and has been able to promote the benefits of Cued Speech with Deaf-Blind adults through British Sign Language and hands-on signing.
He attends exhibitions and conferences on behalf of the Association and gives presentations about it. He occasionally works as a Cued Speech Transliterator and would like to grow his skills in this area. From the outset Paul-Michael saw the simplicity and benefits that Cued Speech offers and hasn’t looked back since. He and his partner Sarah, also a certified cuer, have a young daughter, Rhianne.
Catharine Seddon
Catharine graduated from Oxford with an MA in philosophy and psychology and spent most of her professional life as a television producer, making high-end documentaries, first for the BBC and more recently for Channel 4 through the company she founded, Cat’s Eye Ltd.
Since her son Theo was born deaf and multiply disabled in 2000, Catharine’s life has changed direction. She is now developing a portfolio of public service roles, including the magistracy, the Greater London Family Panel, and membership of a DSS Tribunal.
She teaches Cued Speech to parents and professionals around Greater London gives presentations and workshops on behalf of the Association. Catharine has attended parliamentary receptions with a view to raising awareness of Cued Speech and gathering information. In 2007, she also taught Cued Speech to a group of deaf French students at our residential Summer school. 
Barney Sheppard
Barney joined the Cued Speech team at the beginning of the National Awareness Campaign in 2005, taking on the role of the temporary Information Officer during his gap year while the search for a permanent Information Officer took place. After a month he began working one day a week in this role, performing many pivotal design and research tasks. Barney now has a full-time job locally but helps out as and when he can, mainly on design and desktop publishing work.
Volunteers: We have a team of 20 dedicated volunteers, both deaf and hearing, whose work includes teaching on our courses, helping at exhibitions, in our crèche and in our office, and by creating e-learning and other training materials, interpreting foreign research and fundraising.
One such volunteer is Andy Houghten who designed our learn to cue website absoluty free.
Andy has over twenty years experience in teaching and training both in the UK and abroad which has given him a thorough understanding of learning and how to design effective learning materials. More specifcally Andy has been an Instructional Designer for over six years, working directly on e-learning projects and being involved in all levels and stages of the production process.
He firmly believes e-learning can provide learning opportunities which were not previously possible and has used animations to show how cued speech works. He has recorded and edited video in his work with the Association.
Andy has taught students in Honduras, Florida, Switzerland, Portugal, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Sultanate of Oman and Dorset. Before he became a teacher he was a croupier.
Andy now works as the Learning Pool Technical Trainer where he has created our very own Dynamic Learning Enviroment (cuedle).
We always welcome any help that volunteers can give. If you would like to help in the development of our charity, please contact us.