About Us
Our mission is to improve the quality and timeliness of clinical care for pediatric hearing-impaired patients, including diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of hearing loss.
- To serve as a liaison between families with children who are deaf/hard of hearing in order to facilitate and expedite early identification and intervention.
- To educate professionals regarding hearing impairment, the impact of hearing loss on development, and the necessity of appropriate intervention and rehabilitation.
- To provide professionals with the tools needed to serve the rehabilitative needs of children who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- To measure the efficacy of these efforts and continually improve delivery of health care and educational services to children who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Children and Families
Sound Support assists families when they first learn their child is deaf/hard of hearing. Sound Support can help in the following ways:
- Provide families with information about hearing loss.
- Connect families to local educational services.
- Help families obtain Children’s Special Health Care Services (CSHCS).
- Provide information about parent groups such as AG Bell, Guide-By-Your-Side, and Michigan Hands & Voices.
We also support families after diagnosis of hearing loss when we:
- Work with families to facilitate classroom accommodations, such as FM systems or real-time captioning.
- Provide school visits to discuss a child’s individual needs with teachers and other school staff.
- Provide opportunities to network with other families of children who are deaf/hard of hearing.
- Serve as a resource when general questions arise.
Educators
To support educators working with children who are deaf/hard of hearing with the goal of maximizing their use of spoken language, Sound Support offers the following types of services:
- Inservice training and workshops provide updated information to educators on a variety of topics such as:
- Auditory-verbal therapy
- Cochlear implants
- Hearing aid technology
- Mainstreaming
- School visits offer information regarding a specific child. An observation of the child in the educational setting is followed by consultation with the staff to discuss the child’s specific needs. Parents or professionals can request workshops and school visits.
Medical Community
A child with hearing loss is rarely served by a single professional but instead is served by a community of professionals. Each professional plays an important role in helping the child reach his or her full potential. Sound Support provides lectures, inservice training and other outreach to a variety of professionals.
- Sound Support increases awareness of hearing loss among the medical community through presentations at regional and state professional meetings.
- Roundtable discussions give audiologists, speech pathologists, teacher consultants and other professionals an opportunity to network, collaborate and share information.
- Lectures regarding intervention techniques and advances in technology provide undergraduate and graduate students across the state with valuable information.
