Work

I am a social scientist and studied orthopedagogics or remedial education at the University of Leiden. After finishing my masters I worked as a researcher at the University of Utrecht and the University of Amsterdam and got my Ph.D. degree in 1997. The topic of my doctoral thesis was: parental beliefs regarding their children's development. Other research topics are: youth delinquency and empowerment programmes, programmes for parents of deaf or hard hearing children, language disorders of young children and language screening in the Youth Health Care, dyslexia subtypes, the education of reading and linguistic skills in primary schools, chronically ill adolescents and their health related quality of life. Other employers were the Dutch Family Council (NGR), Van Dijk Van Soomeren en Partners, Verwey-Jonker Institute, Netherlands Youth Institute (NJi), The Dutch Foundation of the Heard of Hearing Child (NSDSK) and recently the University of Rotterdam, University of Applied Science at the School of Health Care (Hogeschool Rotterdam) and the CED Group (Centre of Educational Service).