This is perhaps one of the hardest questions of all for us to answer.
Stammering has been recorded throughout history and the search for a cause and a cure has been unrelenting. Whilst we now know a great deal more about the factors that can make a child vulnerable, and we are beginning to become more confident about overcoming the problem when a child is still young, we still have to be cautious
about ideas to do with "success" or "cure".
Cure is a rather unhelpful word - it is a medical word associated with illness - and stammering is not an illness.
Some people may always have a degree of stammering in their speech. It is how the person deals with this and reacts to it that can be part of the problem and part of the solution.
All we can say with any degree of confidence is that it is not necessarily helpful to rate successful therapy by how many times a child or adult stammers. It is also important to consider the level of self confidence that the person has in his or her ability to communicate.
Most people who have experienced a stammer will say that they can be fluent under certain circumstances, Some therapy strategies can produce "fluent", but highly controlled speech (i.e. not spontaneous), and it would be wrong to say that a "cure" had been found under these circumstances.
At the Michael Palin Centre, we are concerned not to make unrealistic promises. We feel that there are a number of ways of measuring a "successful" outcome, but one measure is not enough. The most important outcome must be how the person feels about communicating.
We include in our measures:
