Counselling and Coaching Parents of Children with Hearing Impairments

by Warren Estabrooks, M.Ed., Dip. Ed. Deaf., Cert. AVT President, WE Listen International, Inc. Toronto, Canada

Universal newborn hearing screening programs have been instrumental in the very early diagnosis of hearing impairments much earlier than ever before in history. In addition, babies and very young chilrden can be fitted with state of art hearing technology including cochlear implants very early in life. Consequently, opportunities for the development of hearing, listening and spoken language are at an all time high.

Around the world, parents of such young children require supportive counselling following the diagnosis and expert coaching in techniques and strategies during early intervention to help their children maximize their "new" hearing potential. Such counselling and coaching is the charge of all the professionals whose privilege it is to serve these families.

In this session, Mr. Estabrooks will address a model for counselling and coaching that may involve surgeons, audiologists, speech therapists, auditory-verbal practitioners, teachers and other early intervention providers in an interdisciplinary approach.

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Duration of the presentation: 78 minutes. This presentation contains 10 movie clips. Please note that you cannot fast forward within a movie clip. If you wish to move forward, just click on the next slide.

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