Need for the Early Intervention Programme (Montfort Care)
In India, up to 3% of newborns are affected with profound hearing-impairment. Many cases go undetected until long after normal language acquisition is no longer possible. While primary healthcare has been charged by the Government of India to address this concern, screening is still not carried out for the majority of children in India.
According to The Indian Academy for Paediatrics, hurdles to universal screening in India include: lack of awareness among parents/community; overly burdened medical professionals and stigma attached to hearing aids. Additional challenges result from insufficient resources at the local level for screening and intervention, insufficient trained service providers, and little community awareness regarding the need for early screening and the potential consequences.
When hearing impairment interferes with a child's language acquisition, the consequences can be devastating to the child and their future. Language acquisition is necessary for complex thinking and neural pathway development. The lack of speech and language limits an individual's ability to communicate, which creates a barrier to interpersonal relationships. Isolation created from hearing impairment contributes to poor mental health and well-being. Additionally, hearing-impairment is correlated with illiteracy or low levels of literacy, which in turn leaves hearing-impaired adults prone to high rates of unemployment.
Compared to other countries around the world, the portion of India's population that is deaf is significantly higher. While this statistic is troubling, it is even more concerning that half of all 'deafness' is preventable and most of the portion not preventable is treatable, meaning India's present misfortune could be remedied, but little to nothing it being done.
According to a study analysing the costs of unaddressed hearing loss, World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the annual economic penalty due to challenges from communication, stigma, social isolation, and loss of productivity is over $700 billion dollars. Most of the costs in health and education are borne by developing countries where services are often unavailable and where hearing-impairment contributes to a loss of national productivity.
The conclusion is that early intervention and identification of hearing-impairment, combined with the provision and use of hearing devices in rehabilitation improves language acquisition, better access to education opportunities and integration as well as provides significant economic benefits.
Programme overview:
To address the problem mentioned above, The Stephen School plans to leverage their six decades plus experience in working for the cause of education for children with hearing impairment, to implementing the Early Intervention Programme
The Montfort Care Early Intervention Programme will focus on identifying Hearing Impaired children within their 1st year of life while offering timely therapy, medical linkages, education & eventually ensuring �Effective integration� to the society both on the academic and social fronts.
Acting as a nodal guidance center in the area of operations, the direct role of Montfort Care will be in creating awareness among public and medical fraternity, conducting early screening of children, enhancing access to therapy, medical treatment, hearing aids, speech therapy and parent infant training activities directly as well as in partnership with other stakeholders.
The uniqueness of the intervention will be its scope to reach out to the needy early with in their communities and provide support through minimal capital expenditure, rather innovatively supporting the parents of children and the local stakeholders with the necessary specific technical models and expertise.
Objectives of the programme
The key objectives of the programme are mentioned below
1. To create awareness among the communities and medical fraternity about hearing impairment and the need for timely screening and intervention
2. To provide needy children with hearing impairment access to timely and proper screening and diagnoses.
3. To provide necessary therapy and education support and linkages to needed resources to children with hearing impairment to enable them to overcome the challenges associated with hearing impairment and integrate them into the mainstream/ special education system as desired.
Target group:
The target group for the different activities under this programme are given below
1. Parents or expectant mothers
2. Parents of new born babies or children up to 6 years
3. Children from the age of 0 - 6 years
4. Service providers of education and health systems for children with Hearing impairment.
5. Care givers of children with hearing impairment
6. Nursery and primary school going children
Activities
Awareness and sensitization camps:
The Montfort Care team plans to undertake an awareness and sensitisation campaign aimed at mid and low income residential community as well as service providers like government hospitals, clinics and other NGOs located in and around Mumbai. The campaign will include
i) workshops in high risk communities and schools to create awareness among parents, teachers, and other stakeholders regarding hearing-impairment and the need for early screening of infants.
Number of awareness camps planned:
In 2018- 2019: 5 camps. 2019 - 2020 : 10 camps 2020 - 2021: 12 camps
ii) visits and tie ups with government hospitals, clinics and NGOs for partnerships, awareness and referrals, working to expand their network of collaborators to facilitate awareness and the need for screenings.
iii) publishing relevant information edited for both print and digital formats to be and distributed to partners and contacting media outlets for Public Service Announcement.
Screening to check for Hearing Impairment (Early identification services)
At the Montfort Care center, a trained team of specialist will conduct auditory screening for children in the age group 0 - 6 years from Mumbai and the surrounding communities to check for hearing impairment.
Information obtained from the hearing screening will be used to plan for the necessary therapy, medical or surgical intervention (hearing aids and/or cochlear implants) and in making recommendations to improve functioning at school.
Target number of children who will be reached through formal and informal screening techniques: 500 per year.
Ongoing counselling for the parents and the implementation of the parent infant programme (3 year programme)
Once a child has been diagnosed with hearing impairment and opts for treatment at the EIC, the parents will also be provided with counselling. Often the parents do not accept the diagnosis, feel helpless or do not know how to support the child.
The parental counselling
is geared towards helping parents accept the diagnosis, develop a positive attitude and recognise their child's potential and support the child through therapy and education. This will enable the parent to get involved with the child's therapy and also further education and support in integration in society.
The parent infant programme is targeted at helping the parent communicate orally with the children so as to increase their exposure to and acquisition of oral language. The child-parent relationship has a major influence on most aspects of child development and the many hours spent in the company of the parent as compared to a visit with a specialist offers the potential for many more focused hours of interaction that a classroom environment or visit with a professional will not provide. Training parents to interact and encourage the child's use of language maximizes their child's progress.
Auditory Verbal Therapy and Speech Therapy sessions
A trained speech therapist, audiologist and special educator will provide children with individual Auditory Verbal Therapy and Speech Therapy. The focus is to expose children to environment and speech sounds. Children will learn to imitate and produce recognisable sounds that are precursors of speech. Eventually, the children will be able to communicate orally.
Facilitating referrals and links to para professionals to enable children to get affordable hearing aids, cochlear implants
In cases where the child needs hearing aids or cochlear implants, Montfort Care will facilitate referrals and links to para professions to enable children to get affordable hearing aids, cochlear implants and the parents to have access to the right resources and services to better meet the needs of hearing-impaired children.
Kind regards,
Ranjith Moovarasu sg
9702777614
