Our New Ears (ONE)

Cause Description

Our New Ears (ONE) is an entirely voluntary group and, in 2014, became part of DeafHear.ie (formerly the National Association for the Deaf) which is a charitable not-for-profit organisation, governed by a voluntary Board of Directors with more than a fifty year history in Ireland. 

It is run by parents of deaf children who now hear through technology. Our children have had surgeries to receive bone anchored hearing aids & cochlear implants or else have been able to access sound through high powered hearing aids. As the parents of deaf children we can clearly recognise the needs & struggles of our children and so we advocate on their behalf to get for them the best supports and therapies they need so that they can reach their full potential.

Our greatest success to date was our Happy New Ear campaign that changed government policy in 2013 and resulted in Irish deaf children becoming entitled to receive two cochlear implants from 2014.

Our New Ears also know how difficult it is for our children to develop listening & spoken language skills having missed months or even years in the critical window where language skills are developed & achieved. Our children need habilitation to teach them to listen & speak. None of the rehabilitation therapies currently available in Ireland are specifically geared towards deaf children so we have looked abroad to the UK & USA and found that deaf children there receive focused therapy called Auditory Verbal Therapy (AVT). AVT recognises that what is happening in a deaf child's brain is a neurological emergency. There is a short window for a child (usually up to the age of 5) to develop spoken language so what AVT aims to do is accelerate the rate at which listening & spoken language skills are achieved.

Our New Ears are agreed that this therapy will greatly benefit the children who we advocate for and so devised a plan on how we could bring AVT to Ireland. So far we have funded expert audiologist and leading auditory verbal therapist Carol Flexer to meet with and educate families & professionals in a two day seminar. In November 2016 we sponsored the world renowned John Tracy Clinics visit to Ireland. They met with 24 Irish families and 50 Irish professionals teaching the skills & benefits of AVT. Our New Ears understand these seminars are not enough. We want AVT to be accessible to deaf children in Ireland on an ongoing basis. To progress this vision we successfully applied for funding from an Irish foundation who agreed to sponsor 11 Irish professionals to undertake level 1 AVT training and are thrilled to confirm that ONE now offer subsidised sessions for all families of deaf children to avail of this therapy. We hope this will have huge implications for deaf children, allowing them to access appropriate therapy, meaning they will have the very best chance of developing spoken language.

As we are 100% voluntary, we depend totally on fundraising. Every penny received goes directly towards supporting deaf children. Please support us because we have so much more we can do and we don't want to stop our work until Ireland gives gold standard care for deaf children. Thank You!