Early Intervention for Children With Hearing Loss

Abstract

Family-centered early intervention for children with hearing loss is intended to strengthen families’ interactions with their children to support children’s language development, and should include providing parents with information they can use as part of their everyday routines. However, little is known about the information received by families via early intervention and whether this aligns with recommended practices. This study used in-depth interviews to examine parents’ reports of information received from early intervention service providers about how to promote the language development of their children with hearing loss. Thematic analysis was used to identify patterns in the information parents received. The information parents receive is partially in line with current recommended practices, such as the importance of frequent communication with their children during everyday activities. However, parents also discussed the need for additional unbiased and specific information about how to promote their children’s language skills.

Service Delivery to Children With Mild Hearing Loss: Current Practice Patterns and Parent Perceptions

“…This experience is shaped by a variety of factors, including amount of HA use, the quality of the HA fit, and the quality and quantity of linguistic input in the child's environment (Ambrose, Walker, Unflat-Berry, Olsen, & Moeller, 2015;. Although early intervention services typically focus on supporting families in providing their children with high rates of linguistic input (Decker & Vallotton, 2016), children's cumulative auditorylinguistic experiences cannot be fully maximized if children do not have optimal auditory access to that input through well-fit and consistently worn amplification.…”

O uso de cenários cotidianos baseados na ferramenta educacional My World com mães de crianças e adolescentes com deficiência auditiva

“…In the field of Audiology, such practices have been shown to provide better results than conventional therapy (4,7) . However, studies have indicated pointed out that there is still a need for new strategies to bring patients and families closer to their daily lives (3,5) . The present study can help to minimize this gap and meet the type of demand inherent to these practices.…”

“…Studies in the field of Audiology have demonstrated that speech therapies should be developed according to the paradigm of family-centered practices (3)(4)(5) . Thus, the auditory rehabilitation has gone through changes in its structure, increasingly emphasizing the importance of the family in this process, since the family system is fundamental for language construction of the child (6) .…”

“…The authors investigated, by a semi-structured interview, the information received in family-centered early intervention programs, by 12 normal hearing parents of children with hearing loss, being 11 mothers and one father. By thematic analysis of the interview reports, the authors observed that the programs are partially following the guiding principles of family-centered early intervention practices, because, according to the participants, even though the professionals instruct about the importance of interaction during everyday activities for the development of language abilities in the child, there is lack of individualized guidance specific to the reality of each child (3) .…”

Communication Skills and Communicative Autonomy of Prelinguistic Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children: Application of a Video Feedback Intervention

“…In a qualitative research study, Decker and Vallotton (2016) interviewed 12 hearing parents of children with hearing loss to explore the nature of information that parents receive to help with management of their child's hearing. The key theme that emerged was for parents to "keep talking" to their deaf and hard-of hearing child and to focus on sound and the child's hearing.…”