About 70 babies each year in Queensland (out of 61000) will have moderate or profound hearing loss. 95% of babies have their hearing screened within 30 days of birth. About 90% of hearing-impaired children are born to hearing parents.
Once children are born the window for learning closes very early. If they can start to get help between birth and six months they still have every chance of becoming age-appropriate with their listening and spoken language.
Methods to teach deaf children include Auslan – Australian Sign Language (signing) Total Communication (signing finger spelling lip-reading gesturing) Auditory Oral Therapy (AOT) (lip-reading and facial cues while teaching children to use their residual hearing and to speak using speech therapy – still taught by Education Queensland) but these are being discouraged by a new approach which is claiming high levels of effectiveness with Auditory-Verbal Therapy (AVT).
Auditory-Verbal Therapy is being taught at the Hear and Say Centre. 93% of children taught with the AVT method can listen and speak so well that they can attend mainstream schools with no significant difference between their progress and children with normal hearing.
Hear and Say uses intensive repetition of language combined with fun and games. Parents play the major part learning the therapy and then using it constantly at home. Lip-reading or hand-signing is discouraged in order to concentrate a child’s attention on listening and speaking.
[Not clear whether AVT only works for children with cochlear implants or whether it helps all hearing-impaired children.]