Educating Deaf Students: Global Perspectives

Issues Around Supporting Families With Young Deaf Children

Issues Around Supporting Families With Young Deaf Children LINDA WATSON, SUSAN GREGORY, WENDY MCCRACKEN, AND STEPHEN POWERS
This chapter is based on research that was commissioned and funded by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) and undertaken by researchers from the Universities of Birmingham and Manchester in the United Kingdom. The research is described elsewhere in this volume (see Gregory, Andrews, McCracken, Powers, & Watson) and reported in detail in Powers, Gregory, Lynas, McCracken, Watson, Boulton, and Harris (1999). The study showed that although work with families with young deaf children was afforded a high degree of importance by all those surveyed, it was conceptualized differently by the individuals and within different groups involved: parents , teachers of deaf children, and those teachers’ managers. This fact gave rise to areas of potential conflict and several issues for discussion. Parents’ Views As part of the study, parents of young deaf children were interviewed. Although they had some differences in emphasis among them, they stressed the importance of • an immediate home visit post-diagnosis, • sensitivity to their feelings by teachers of deaf children and other professionals , • receiving a confident and positive message from professionals, • accessibility of the teacher of deaf children, and • the involvement of their extended family in all aspects of the program. The importance of the initial visit and the early visits to the home by the teacher of deaf children was clearly at the forefront of parents’ minds, as evidenced in the following comments: 85 It was a shock. Despair crept in. Then A [the teacher of deaf children] arrived—full of confidence and gave me the courage to go on. G was diagnosed at the hospital at 2 p.m. We got home at 4. By 5 the teacher of the deaf had phoned and came round that night and stayed all evening. We were incredibly tearful. He turned it round. Phrases such as “being thrown a lifejacket,” “a weight lifted from our shoulders ,” and “there was hope at the end of the tunnel” were frequently used by parents and demonstrate the perception of the benefits of those initial visits. Many support services for deaf children in the United Kingdom have introduced targets for the timing of the initial visit to the family, which may state “within the week” or even sooner, with one service having a quality standard, which states that a teacher of deaf children will visit or contact the family by telephone within 48 hours of diagnosis. The family quoted above clearly appreciated the fact that the initial visit was made on the day of diagnosis , but sensitivity is obviously needed to ensure that making a visit so soon after diagnosis has a positive outcome for the family. Parents appreciated being given a “confident and positive message.” They wanted to be given straightforward and direct advice. [The teacher of deaf children] was brilliant. You need the one person. She had been there before. It was lovely to speak to someone who understood. It wasn’t just us [who were] affected. Grandparents were affected and [the teacher] tried to be positive. It was an emotional time for us all. [The teacher of deaf children] was a stranger, which was quite nice. She was positive where we were very negative, thinking C would never speak, never get married. . . . Everything was positive, whereas we were very negative and we needed that. If she [the teacher of deaf children] tells me to do something, then I know that she’s asking me for a good reason, and I’ll try and try again. They’re all very on the ball on how to put things without giving offence, and repeating it over and over when you forget or get it wrong. The desire to be given encouragement as well as advice extended to such issues as choice of educational placement. Parents valued the opinion of the teacher of deaf children when the time arose for them to nominate a school for their child, frequently requesting that the teacher visit the school with them, arguing that the teacher of deaf children had knowledge 86 Watson, Gregory, McCracken, and Powers of their child and so could judge the suitability of any educational placement . She helped to choose all the schools. . . . She had a better idea of which questions to ask. It was great to have someone else who knew what they were on about. Who else would come with...