Annual Report
MISSION STATEMENT
“The Ear Foundation is an independent charity that helps deaf people and their families make the best use of technology to improve hearing, communication and spoken language. We do this through education, family and clinical services, carrying out research and advocating for access to the latest hearing technologies”
TRUSTEES’ REPORT 2007
The Ear Foundation works with deaf children and young people with cochlear implants, their families and their community-based professionals. In 2007, we continued to provide the services and resources needed to build a bridge between the clinical services, where the implementation of new hearing technologies takes place, and the community, where children develop communication skills and spoken language. Our aim is to ensure that deaf children and young people of today have the best possible opportunities to maximise the benefits of these new hearing technologies, wherever they live.
The Ear Foundation services include:
- Family programme, including groups for children, young people and adults, resources and information;
- Educational courses and conferences, including a community education programme; and
- Family and Child-centred research, looking at the outcomes from implantation in everyday life and how to maximise them.
Family Programme
Parenting a deaf child in the era of technological change:
During 2007 we continued the work started in 2006 in supporting parents facing the challenges of bringing up deaf children in this era of technological change. We are grateful for the inspirational input from David Luterman and Kris English from the USA whose workshops were again oversubscribed.
Support for families, children and young people:
2007 saw the relaunch of the children’s and family programme which is now called the “Connect & Communicate” programme.
This family centred programme is subdivided into 5 different sections:
- Babies and Toddlers;
- Ready, Steady Go – for 2-4 year olds;
- Leaping on with Language – for 5-11 year olds;
- To Infinity – for 11-18 year olds;
- Adult users.
During 2007, activities were organised at The Ear Foundation for all of these groups. These activities included;
- Baby sessions for parents with newly identified deaf babies;
- Fortnightly sessions around communication for pre-school children and their families;
- Special Branch sessions for children with profound and complex disabilities and cochlear implants;
- Special Issues days on preparing your child for primary school and preparing your child for secondary school;
- Summer schools;
- An Information day about cochlear implantation;
- Adult user groups.
During 2007, The Ear Foundation had 294 direct contacts with 124 families via these activities.
Support for families, children and young people:
In addition to this, 200 families were influenced by the Connect and Communicate programme through training courses run in collaboration with local educational services.
Our relationship with other voluntary sector organisations continues to flourish, in particular with the NDCS where Suzanne Harrigan, our Family Education Co-ordinator, has provided advice and input to early identification family weekends and the development of an early communication skills pack.
In collaboration with the staff of Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire County Sensory Services, we continue to host weekly groups for parents and their deaf children in our family centre, Marjorie Sherman House. “Let’s Listen” continues with families of young deaf children attending together and sharing a programme of activities and music, while “Busy Hands” offers the opportunity for parents and young children to learn sign together.
Delivered in partnership with staff of Nottingham Cochlear Implant Programme, our popular summer programme continued, giving children and young people with cochlear implants the opportunity to get-together, build friendships and develop valuable life skills. Our well-established Teenz United group, led by Elizabeth Beadle, until recently teacher of the deaf at Nottingham Cochlear Implant Programme, with staff from the programme, brings together young people with implants from all over the UK. These young people are often in mainstream schools, without a peer group. Teenz United enables them to make new friends, access peer-to-peer support, build self-esteem, gain life skills, and learn how to manage the complex implant technology independently.
During 2007 we held three “get-togethers” for adult cochlear implant users and their families to provide opportunities for groups to meet. We were grateful for input from staff at Nottingham Cochlear Implant Programme and staff from Advanced Bionics & from Cochlear Europe, who were on hand to answer questions about the technology.
Resources and information
We continue to ensure that up-to-date information about cochlear implantation is widely available in different formats. During 2007 we completed the following:
- Early school years’ booklets for parents and teachers;
- Cochlear Implant 2007 information leaflet with Cochlear Europe: 15,000 disseminated;
- Relaunch of Nottingham Early Assessment Package, with training DVD, database, with support from Cochlear Europe;
- “STEPS Together” with support from Advanced Bionics and developed with Nottingham Cochlear Implant Programme;
- Counselling DVD with David Luterman, with support from NDCS;
- Champions: resource for working with complex children with implants with support from Advanced Bionics;
- Face masks – resources for families and professionals with young children;
- NEAP translated into 12 languages; used in several countries to monitor progress after newborn screening and early intervention; for example, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Holland, Belgium;
- Resources translated into further languages.
Our website is regularly used for booking courses and buying resources; purchases can now be made in euros and dollars, in addition to pounds sterling. The rise in visitors per day reflects the increased use, with 204,387 visitors in 2007 compared with 137,840 visitors in 2006. We are pleased that several pages are viewed on each visit, with an average length of stay of 5 min 10 secs.
Education – Courses and conferences:
We produce our courses brochure every six months and we held 60 in-house courses in 2007, compared with 50 in 2006. Delegates to our in-house courses came from Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Korea, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey – as well as the UK. “Tailor-made” courses have also been written on request – both held in-house and around UK and internationally. These were based on our courses brochure. In-house groups came from Sweden, Finland, Russia and India. Attendees included teachers of the deaf, speech and language therapists, audiologists, and learning support assistants. Parents and carers of deaf children are welcome at all courses – either as delegates, or in helping to deliver the courses, ensuring that the courses remain child and family focussed.
In 2007 we further developed a new area for training – in non-professional counselling skills – for teachers, therapists and audiologists. A training DVD with David Luterman was completed (supported by NDCS), and we developed a specialist course with Kris English (supported by Advanced Bionics.
In the UK, we have given input to all Teacher of the Deaf training courses bar one and we were invited to give input to two audiologist training courses. We have run courses at seven cochlear implant centres and at six educational services; and we are now delivering courses in North West England, Scotland and South East England. The Ear Foundation made major contributions/workshops at British Academy of Audiology (900 people), British Cochlear Implant Group Academic meeting, British Association Teachers of Deaf annual meeting, National Heads of Educational Services meeting.
Internationally The Ear Foundation courses are run regularly with partners in Spain, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, and Denmark; and during 2007 we have taken “ad hoc” courses to Russia, Canada, Greece, Portugal, France, Spain and Serbia. We have been invited speakers at EFAS meeting in Heidelberg, ANFAS (Parents group) in Madrid, NUD (Scandinavian Deaf/blind group) in Denmark, CIGICON in Pune (India), FEAPDA (European teachers of deaf) in Friedberg. The Ear Foundation has acted as advisors to Johns Hopkins, Washington; to NDSK research group in Amsterdam; to Advanced Bionics bilateral research study in US.
Four focused days were held with international speakers: Bilateral Implantation; EURO-CIU Biennial conference; Cochlear Implants 2007: The State of the Art in cochlear implantation; Deafblind conference: Breaking the Barriers.
We have successfully developed web-based training through iLearning with Phonak, for which we thank Chris Cartwright in particular for his help. Seven Twilight Lectures were broadcast on the Internet from The Ear Foundation and they were watched worldwide. Lecturers were Professor Rich Tyler, Steve Sharp, Sue Archbold, Professor Gerry O'Donoghue, Dr Lorraine Gailey and Professor Dr Paul Govaerts. Each year we have a special lecture in memory of our first Patron and President, Marjorie Sherman, which is sponsored by her family. This year’s lecture was given by Professor Dr Thomas Lenarz on the subject “Cochlear preservation surgery – on the way towards the regenerated inner ear”.
Evaluations of our training events are consistently over 90% for course content.
Family and Child-centred Research
Alex Wheeler co-ordinates our research activities and, in 2007, included the following:
- Completed “Young people and their implants”, funded by NDCS, resulting in peer reviewed paper and booklet for parents and young people;
- Completed “Communication changes after implantation”, funded by NDCS, resulting in two peer reviewed papers;
- Completed “Supporting young people with implants in secondary school”, funded by RNID;
- Completed review of parent views on bilateral implantation, funded by RNID, resulting in publication by RNID;
- Obtained two-year grant for research into developing early communication skills in young children with bilateral implants, TAIT Video Analysis, funded by Deafness Research UK;
- Grant from RNID to develop profile for monitoring early communication skills in children with bilateral implants.
Papers published from our work in 2007 included:
- Archbold S, O’Donoghue G (2007) Ensuring the long-term use of cochlear implants in children – the importance of engaging local resources and expertise Ear and Hearing. Vol 28, no 2, 3s-6s;
- Tait M, Nikolopoulos TP, Wells P, White A (2007) The use and reliability of Tait video analysis in assessing preverbal language skills in profoundly deaf and normally hearing children under 12 months of age. Int Jnl Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology 21 Feb 2007;
- Tait M, Nikolopoulos TP, Lutman ME. (2007) Age at implantation and development of vocal and auditory preverbal skills in implanted deaf children. Int J Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology. 71, 613-610;
- Tait M, De Raeve L, Nikolopoulos TP, (2007) Deaf children with cochlear implants before the age of one year: comparison of preverbal communication compared with normally hearing children. Int Jnl Paediatric Otol. 71, 1605-1611;
- Watson, LM, Hardie T, Archbold S, Wheeler A (2007) Parents’ views on changing communication after cochlear implantation. Journal Deaf Studies and deaf Education. 12:3 Summer 2007;
- Wheeler A, Archbold S, Gregory S, Skipp A, (2007) Cochlear Implants: The young peoples’ perspective. Journal Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. 12:3 Summer 2007.
Seven short years ago I joined the Board of Trustees. My Knowledge of Cochlear Implants was limited to reading the odd article in the press, and to the documents which had been sent to me a few weeks earlier. It was to be a very steep learning curve.
Over those seven years the influence of The Foundation has increased dramatically, both nationally and internationally. Who would have thought that we would be invited to advise the N.I.C.E. committee reporting to the Government on cochlear implants?
We now enjoy working in partnership with the RNID and the NDCS which brings benefits to all parties, and in particular to the young people that we are all here to serve.
Our day to day funding used to be heavily dependant on donations, and whilst this is still in part the case, our decision to expand the Education Department has brought us a most valuable additional income stream. There are few countries where our Team do not lecture, or from which we do not receive delegates here at our training events.
In the short time that I have been involved with the Foundation, I have seen innovation and evolution proceed at a sometimes quite frenetic pace. We are about to embark on the next ambitious phase of development which will greatly expand the range of services that we can offer those with hearing difficulties.
It is difficult to imagine being involved in a more vibrant organisation, a state engendered solely by the dedication and enthusiasm of our staff to whom I offer my grateful thanks.
In particular, I would mention our Chief Executive Officer, Brian Archbold, who will retire from office this October. I have enjoyed working with Brian, and pay tribute to his selfless dedication in the running of the Foundation.
It has been a great privilege being Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and I thank my colleagues for their support and wise counsel. Earlier this year Peter Vinden retired as Vice Chairman and John Atkins took his place. Peter made a valuable contribution to the work of the Board, in particular with regard to the finances and accounts.
John takes over from me as Chairman, and I depart content in the knowledge that he will lead the Foundation forward in its quest to improve the lives of those with hearing difficulties.
My very best wishes to you all.
Richard J Pannell JP FRICS
Chairman
28 April 2008