Testimonials
"Mark’s training is excellent because he has helped me with my dyspraxia and given me more control. I feel more excited for learning at school and more confident. I now enjoy every subject, not just a few."
"Attending Vision Training sessions with Mark has had a hugely positive impact on my child’s dyspraxia, and ability to overcome obstacles faced in everyday life. Considerable progress has occurred in several respects, ranging from vastly improved fine and general motor skills through to improved learning and enhanced self-confidence.
As an on-going process over a couple of years, Mark has applied and adapted exercises to suit my child’s needs at different stages, demonstrating a clear understanding of not only what was required but also the context of my child’s day to day activities and progress through their school, social and sporting life over this time.
A key feature of Mark’s approach is the way he has maintained an on-going dialogue with my child and me, along with his encouragement and commitment to my child’s progress."
"I have always been impressed by Mark’s services. He is always polite, professional and always had time to answer my questions. The activities/exercises he set for my ten year daughter with dyslexia were always thoroughly explained and consolidated before the end of the session with clear guidance of how to continue at home.
He always made R feel at ease. I would thoroughly recommend him."
Mark Menezes has a wealth of knowledge to support children with all types of learning challenges and their families both in terms of optometry and looking at a more holistic approach to retained primitive reflexes.
I have known Mark for 8 years, Mark has done an amazing job of working with our son to ensure the best outcome of his vision and ability to learn at school, as well as addressing his primitive reflexes which had not transitioned through.
Mark is a kind, calm and patient person who puts both your child and you at ease during your visit and assessment.
I would highly recommend Mark to parents who have a concern about their child’s vision and ability to learn.
"Our son has Autism and Dyspraxia, although this brings many difficulties he continues to find reading comprehension difficult even with intensive teaching, when text is small or presented differently he finds this challenging. When reading a book he actually moves his head to follow the text . J also suffers with headaches and his eye twitches when he becomes tired.
We were very pleased to find Mark is experienced with SEN, the activities that J has been doing for the past 12 months are definitely helping him with balance and visualisation. We are very excited to keep progressing with these programmes Mark sets to continue J's progress and hopefully make reading and other life skills achievable and enjoyable."
"When my daughter was first referred to Mark she was struggling to read however, she is currently happily and confidently studying A Level English. From my daughter’s very first assessment, diagnosis and report back in 2012 Mark has been professional, approachable and supportive. Mark’s extensive knowledge and experience means he provides a comprehensive optometric vision training programme and, one that has made a world of difference to my daughter."
"My son was fortunately referred to Mark towards the end of Year 6, by someone who knew of Mark’s work with vision training. Whilst good at Maths, Sam began to struggle at primary school particularly with reading speed, comprehension and poor handwriting.
After an initial assessment, Mark gave us a report and identified a number of issues with Sam including eye tracking and coordination, with a very narrow field of view and limited peripheral vision. Unfortunately, being quite remote to Mark’s practice and with my work, we were not be able to see Mark as regularly as we would have liked, however Mark explained that it was still possible to get the same outcome, but it would simply take longer.
Over the next 18 months we worked on a structured programme of vision training including movement exercises, specific exercises around hand eye coordination, balance and visualisation skills. Very quickly my son became very committed to the programme Mark had set out, as he began to see improvement at school linked to the work with Mark. Seeing this enthusiasm in a teenage boy for extra-curricular work was quite a revelation!
To get the maximum benefit out of working with Mark, requires commitment from both parents and the child. However, our 18 months with Mark have proven to be our single best investment for our son, who went on to get many A* and A grades at GCSE, after struggling so significantly in Year 6 and the first year of secondary school.
Outside of academic improvement we also witnessed improvement in sport, particularly football and his reading of the game from his favoured centre half position. My wife and I will be forever grateful to Mark for his support and Sam still talks about the exercises and tools he learnt within the vision training programme."
"Mark is a gold-standard clinician. Not only is he thorough, kind and compassionate, he explains every detail of why he needs to undertake each assessment and what the conclusions mean. He made me feel at ease as soon as I met him and I felt so relieved to be given a diagnosis that other clinicians had not been able to provide. His clinical correspondence is in detail and evidence based, which being a ‘lay-person’ was so much easier to understand and explain. He adopts a holistic approach to eye care and for me this meant making some dietary changes, adding in extra vitamins though also adapting new methods of complimentary therapies’ such as meditation. Mark has also been easy to contact and his responses are timely. Whatever my concerns have been he has always put my mind at ease. His care and compassion are immeasurable and I trust his diagnosis and would absolutely recommend him." (Patient with brain injury)