What duties involve helping children with hearing loss?

Question

Hello doctor,

I would like to know what your role is in working with children with hearing loss, or more specifically, what duties are involved in working with these children. Here are my questions -

When you work with children who have hearing loss, what are the two or three consequences or effects of the hearing loss that you think have the biggest impact on the child’s life?
Do you think that children with hearing loss are being adequately served in the area where you work? What changes would you like to see for children with hearing loss in your area?
If you are familiar with the speech and language services that children with hearing loss receive in your school or community, do you think these services are meeting the needs of the students? What are your thoughts on this?
If you are aware of the hearing-related services that children with hearing loss are receiving in the schools or community where you work, do you think these services are meeting the student's needs?
What do you think about this? Are there any changes you would like to see in how people work with kids with hearing loss (for example, programs, funding, and devices)?

Please provide me with your opinion.

Answer 1

Hello,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

The primary role in working with children with hearing loss is an early diagnosis of the disease and etiology. Once the diagnosis is made, our duty is to treat the reversible cause of hearing loss (this is more common than irreversible or genetic causes). Our goal is to prevent the probable, diagnose the inaudible, treat the curable, and rehabilitate the disabled.

Hearing is one of the most important sense organ, mutually connected with vision, for speech and language development, which is a must for communication. The most important consequences of hearing loss are speech and language development, and overall psycho-social development (this is dependent on communication).

Children with hearing loss have special importance, as they have to be diagnosed early to prevent delays in speech and language development. The best means to achieve this is universal neonatal hearing screening. This scheme is not followed in our place due to various reasons like,

Social factors requiring community and individual participation.
Economic resources.
Government policy support.

I would like to have a universal hearing screening program because only if we can diagnose early, can we do something. So, the first step is to diagnose early for all the cases.

Hearing, speech, and language services for the hearing impaired are meeting the needs of students who are receiving treatment in tier 1 and a few tier 2 cities. However, in the rest of the places, these services are not adequate. The reason is again -

Lack of awareness of available facilities.
Constant changes in technology and products.
Low literacy also prevents parents from utilizing these resources.
Lack of funding and support from dedicated organizations.
Human resources.
Society participation.

Also, a few important things that should be considered include-

Universal neonatal hearing screening.
Social awareness of the impact of hearing loss and treatable diseases.
Funding for hearing-impaired children, with the provision of financial support for special schools.
Need of low cost and effective rehabilitation devices that should have stable technology, easy to boot, does not have much maintenance cost.
An increase in the number of audiologists is needed, especially to serve the needs of the population.

I hope you are satisfied with my answer.

For further queries, you can consult me at icliniq.

Thank you.