Cliff Cunningham was born in Liverpool, UK in 1941. He is married with 2 sons, 1 daughter and 6 granddaughters. He is a visiting Professor of Applied Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University and currently gently sliding into retirement.
Cliff qualified as a Science Teacher in 1963. Within the first year of teaching he developed interests in children with learning difficulties and behavioural and emotional problems which led him to specialise in children with special needs and to take up a part-time degree in psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London. In 1964-67 he established and ran a reading centre for delinquent adolescent boys as part of an action research project devised by the Rainer Foundation.
In 1969 Cliff moved to Manchester as a founder member of the Hester Adrian Research Centre for the Study of Learning Processes in the Mentally Handicapped (HARC), established and directed by Professor Peter Mittler. He was the recipient of the Mayor of Oldham’s (Robert Bailey) appeal to fund a project on teaching machines for children with severe learning difficulties and researched visual perception and reading – his first close encounter with children with Down syndrome. The local parent association of MENCAP asked Cliff to do something with pre-school children because once they left hospital there was little help. With Dorothy Jeffree, Cliff set up parent workshops as an action research project which focused on sharing experiences with other parents, learning about early child development (using checklists) and observing the child, selecting and analysing specific teaching tasks and behaviour modification. MENCAP published a small practical report which was taken up by many others to fill a void in early parent support.
This direct contact with parents of young children (and the birth of his own) made him realise that not enough was known about the development from birth of children with Down syndrome. Cliff also became aware of the work of Janet Carr and how she was following a cohort of babies with Down syndrome from birth. Cliff gained funding in 1973 to research the development of visually directed reaching in babies with Down syndrome – videotaping at two weekly intervals in the child’s home and assessing their overall development at six weekly intervals. To recruit Cliff had to visit homes soon after the baby was born and began to learn about how families adapt and the difficulties faced. Parents would ask questions or what to do for the child or brothers and sisters, spouses, grandparents. Cliff had no experience and so had to find out what was known and explore various solutions with the parents. So Cliff found he was immersed in early intervention and family support and learnt how to work in partnership with parents.
By 1980 the team had recruited over 180 babies (90% of all Down syndrome births in Greater Manchester). They studied early motor development, early social signals (eye gaze, smiling and vocalising) and mother-baby interactions. Later research focused on early temperament in the children and the long-term effects of the early intervention.
His publications include
• Cunningham C.C. and Sloper. P (1979) Helping Your Handicapped Baby. Souvenir Press, London.
• Cunningham C.C. (1982) Down’s syndrome: An Introduction for Parents. Souvenir Press, London.
• Byrne E, Cunningham C.C and Sloper, P (1988) Families and their Children with Down’s Syndrome: One Feature in Common. Croom Helm, London.
• Cunningham C C and Davis H (1985) Working with Parents: Frameworks for Collaboration. Open University, Milton Keynes.
• Cunningham C C (2006) Down Syndrome: An Introduction for Parents and Carers. Souvenir Press, London.
