The founder and chief executive of Pivotal Point, a one-of-a-kind charity that provides support to neurodivergent children and their families in the Wakatipu, wants, in the long term, for the government to take it over and for there to be enough funding and the right resources, to provide the right support at an early age.
Originally from Scotland, Mrs Leftley, who has a background in neuropharmacology, and her husband Jez, a rural medicine specialist based at Lakes District Hospital, moved to Queenstown with their two eldest children in 2011.
It was not until six years later one child was diagnosed with a global processing disorder, of which dyslexia is a symptom, as well as a significant issue with his eyesight.
In 2020, during the height of Covid, Mrs Leftley became aware of the inequity when her child was still receiving online private tuition, while other families had lost incomes and businesses and were standing in food queues.
"We’ve spent thousands and thousands of dollars on one child and ... we were very aware of the privileged situation we were in.
"The inequity was screaming at me."
She spoke to her husband about taking the money the family would usually spend on their children’s extracurricular activities and funnelling it in to Aspiring Learners, where their child was being tutored, to help others who could not afford it at that time.
That subsequently sparked the idea for Pivotal Point, which last year won the Queenstown Business Awards’ "People’s Choice Award", sponsored by Mountain Scene.
The initial aim was to ensure better collaboration between those working across neurodiversity and provide support for families on the neurodivergent journey, as well as teachers.
Up to 15% of children were dyslexic and attending mainstream schools where teachers often had no training, knowledge or understanding of neurodiversity, Mrs Leftley said.
"That’s why I felt very strongly that we need to ... educate the community and we need to educate our educators because it’s unfair that they’re expected to manage all these different situations without the knowledge, the resources or the funding, for that matter, to accommodate and allow children to just do their best."
In 2021, Pivotal Point won a transformational $100,000 grant from Impact100 Wakatipu, which enabled it to establish a screening programme in Wakatipu schools.
Targeting all year-4 pupils, with parental consent, the screening includes visual and auditory processing.
It’s not a diagnosis but aims to provide families with information about their children and where there may be a learning difference, as well as advice about potential next steps.
Because the majority of children are screened in that year group, it normalises the process and, importantly, collects critical data.
The organisation also established the Pivotal Point Pledge, through which people can donate to support families who need to pay the "extortionate" cost of specialist assessments, for example, or need financial help with private tuition and the like.
To date, $60,000 has been handed out in grants.
Mrs Leftley said her own family’s experience showed the right support at the right time was "life-changing".
"Whether we realise it or not, we are all directly or indirectly connected to neurodivergent people, every single one of us.
"If we ended up learning more about catering to that, we’re actually tapping into an underrated secret weapon, if you like, because we’ve got lots of out-of-the-box thinkers, we’ve got lots of creativity going on.
"And a lot of people who are great at logistics or numbers — lots of different skills that we’re just not tapping into because, sometimes, someone’s got a diagnosis of neurodivergence, it’s held against them.
"And we stop that prejudice."
