Cate Crowley took this year’s students traveling to Bolivia to a new school for the deaf, Centro Effeta Inclusión. The school is directed by Paula Pao Pastor, who was previously director at Camino, another school for the deaf in La Paz. This year’s TC grad students were there just in time for Día de los Madres (Mother’s Day) in Bolivia. TC students provided speech and language therapy in Spanish alongside other teachers and professionals working at the center. Since Centro Effeta is a school for the deaf, much of the therapy occurs in individual or group sessions performing hearing evaluations, fitting and adjusting hearing aids and aural habilitation for students with hearing aids to acquire spoken language. However, students were also able to push into classrooms and support learning and access to the curriculum in that setting as well. Melissa Innis was there as the audiologist to supervise fitting and cleaning of hearing aids for children at Effeta. Check out the pictures below to get a better idea of the student clinicians’ experiences!
Category: Aural Habilitation
Aural habilitation is a type of intervention for children with hearing loss. Because these children are learning skills that have not yet been acquired, intervention is considered habilitative rather than rehabilitative. Aural habilitation can focus on auditory perception training, improving speech, developing language, managing communication, and using hearing aids/assistive listening devices.
Ghana 2013: First Day at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital!
Today was our first day at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital. The teaching hospital is located in Kumasi, Ghana. When we arrived we met Albert Osei-Bagyina, the only speech therapist who works at the hospital. The faculty at Teachers College created English and Twi versions of the Osei-Bagyina Test of Articulation (OBTAT) and gave it to Albert. These two assessments will further aid clincians in Ghana in determining the strengths and weaknesses in the articulation of children who speak English and/or Twi.
After our meeting with Albert, we split up into groups of 4-5 and provided services to children with speech, language and/or hearing disabilities. The most rewarding experience of the day occurred when a mother came in for a follow-up of her young son. Last January, the mother found out that her son needed a hearing aid but her son would not let her put the hearing aid in his ear. Lindsay, along with students from january’s team created a social story to help him learn why the hearing aid was important and how it would help him. Social stories describe a situation or concept, highlighting important parts and presenting common reactions. They are created to help a child understand and be comfortable with an uncomfortable or confusing situation. In this case, the boy’s social story was to get him to wear his hearing aid so he could hear his mother. It was amazing to see the mother return today with her son wearing his hearing aid. It was even more gratifying to see Lindsay’s reaction, knowing she had made such a big impact on his life. His mother brought the social story to the hospital today. She still reads the story three times a day to him. He can now wear his hearing aid for up to three hours at a time. This was our “AHA” moment, being able to see the impact made in this family’s life. Tomorrow we will be back at hospital. We are so ready to get to work. Tune in!!
Model Eval: 3;0- English- Severe Language Delay- Blind/ Multiple Handicaps
Martha is a 3-year-old child who is blind and has very significant cognitive, fine motor, and gross motor impairments. Martha was transitioning from Early Intervention to Preschool during this evaluation. Martha is prelinguistic. In an Evaluation of Child with Multiple Handicapping Conditions, it is always important to provide information on a child’s strengths and weaknesses, and to quantify the child’s developmental levels.
