Publicly provided services are mandated by law to help your baby and your family. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires each state to provide early intervention services. How and what each state provides varies. An overview of the law, IDEA Part C, and links to resources to help you find services for you and your baby are available through the Listening and Spoken Language Knowledge Center of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. See also http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/ei.index.htm

Today’s hearing technologies, early intervention and targeted, individualized teaching methods make it possible for most children who are deaf and hard of hearing to listen, talk, read and participate socially and academically in regular education classrooms. Learning spoken language is important to learning to read and forms the basis for academic success.

Unlike most schools for the deaf, CID teaches children how to listen and talk without using sign language. Instruction takes place in small classes of 2 to 5 children grouped for their ability in speech and language. Constant interaction and activities give the students practice listening and talking. They receive direct instruction in listening, language and speech that provides repeated practice opportunities. Then they participate in lessons that enable them to integrate new skills and practice them through conversational activities. During every activity, the teacher monitors each child’s listening, speech, language and comprehension skills. Evaluation takes place during and after every lesson to assess how each student is progressing toward his or her goals, which change at the rate at which that child experiences success.

We do use phonics—and phonological awareness. Our pediatric audiologists ensure the students have optimal access to auditory information from their hearing aids and/or cochlear implants. We teach our children to read using all of the same methods, strategies and curricula used to teach hearing children to read.

CID services include parent educator support in the home and other community settings, teleintervention sessions and pediatric audiology support. We also have a toddler class for 2-year-olds that combines group instruction and individual therapy. Services begin when our intake coordinator contacts a family to help them navigate the process of enrolling in early intervention services. Once enrolled, each family is assigned a parent educator to guide them throughout their journey in early intervention. One of the first steps is partnering with audiologists to ensure the child has optimal access to sound. For families living outside of our parent educators’ travel area, we offer support via teleintervention sessions or at CID when they visit for audiology appointments.

• the child’s diagnosis
• emotional and social supports
• hearing and hearing loss
• hearing tests
• hearing devices (hearing aids, bone conduction aids, cochlear implants, FM systems)
• early communication
• listening and spoken language development
• tips to encourage listening and spoken language development within daily routines
• typical development in all areas
• benefits of play, music and early literacy
• early intervention services, rights, laws and IFSPs
• transitioning to educational programs for preschoolers and IEPs

CID parent educators and families use a variety of resources, including Small Talk, written by CID staff. This book breaks down the important things today’s parents of children who are deaf and hard of hearing need to know and do including the topics listed above. Small Talk also fills an important need as a textbook for university deaf education and early intervention programs. CID’s Early Listening at Home curriculum encourages coaching the whole family and is an important tool for parent educators.

CID teachers use specialized tools for determining and targeting a variety of goals. At the preschool level, activities are play-based and theme-related. Daily individualized goals target emerging literacy skills, typical childhood development and pragmatic social skills in addition to speech, language and listening. After age 5, academics come into play. We pay special attention to teaching the language involved in understanding math, science and social studies as we continue to attend to our kindergarteners’ speech and social skills. We have a strong focus on developing reading skills, which is especially difficult for many children who are deaf or hard of hearing. We incorporate children’s literature into our program liberally and offer highly intensive remedial help to any child who needs it. Finally, we use curricula from general education and offer a variety of special activities and classes, including art, drama, music and physical education, to fully prepare the children to participate and succeed in their neighborhood schools.

CID students participate in physical education, art and music classes to help develop and strengthen their skills and talents in these areas. Special activities include science and literacy fairs, cooperative projects, performances and after school tennis.

Generous annual support from the community currently makes it possible for the CID school to accept eligible hearing-impaired school candidates regardless of a family’s financial situation. We offer significant financial aid opportunities for families. Please see Tuition and Financial Aid.

Every child develops skills at his or her own rate. Our goal is to help children return to or begin at their local schools (also known as mainstreaming) as soon as possible. For some children, a good time to mainstream is when their language level is equal to that of peers with whom they will work in the same classroom. For older children, we also look at reading skills. We prefer their reading skills be at the same level as those of their classmates. We work closely with families to ensure they know our recommendations and that any placement is a team decision. If needed, support is available for children when they enter the public school system.

CID does not provide transportation to and from school. If your child receives services through a public school contract, the school district may transport her or reimburse you for travel expenses. If your child comes to CID through early intervention, Missouri or Illinois will reimburse mileage, but they do not provide transportation. Parents must apply and gain approval from the early intervention system before any reimbursement can be obtained.

No. We closed our residential program in 2003; however, some families choose to move to the St. Louis area so their children can attend. Please contact our admissions coordinator, Andrea Osman, for help and support in this process.

Children who are deaf or hard of hearing sometimes may detect sounds without their hearing aids because they have what’s called “residual” hearing. It’s important to remember that these children have access to more sounds with their hearing aids on than they do with them off. They need to hear all of the sounds that make up speech in order to include them in their spoken language. Access to all sounds, at every possible waking moment, will give your child the best opportunity to develop speech and spoken language without omitting certain sounds they cannot hear without their hearing aids.

If your child is a CID student, our audiology staff can help your family explore the options. Missouri and Illinois both have early intervention systems that will help with all assistive technology needed for a child to achieve outcomes. Some insurance companies have paid for a portion of hearing aid costs, with the remainder billed through state early intervention programs. Many of the Medicaid programs provide appropriate hearing aids, and several other agencies also may help. CID audiologists and Joanne Parrish Knight Family Center staff can answer other questions about that first pair of hearing aids. If your child needs a second set of hearing aids, you can contact the HIKE Fund and your local Variety Club. Insurance companies should always be encouraged to pay. Many states are putting out mandates, but this varies from state to state.

You can reconvene an Individualized Educational Plan (bring the IEP team together to reassess the plan for your child). It’s sometimes wise to bring someone with you, such as a friend who can be a second set of ears or an advocate who knows the law. Public schools are mandated to provide an appropriate education for your child. You may contact CID’s assessment and admissions director, Andrea Osman, to ask questions about what CID offers.

Along with several listening and spoken language schools and university graduate teacher training programs in Missouri, CID helped develop four lists of basic facts about hearing impairment for school administrators and teachers serving students who are deaf and hard of hearing. Your child’s teacher may want to pursue continuing education at a CID workshop in St. Louis. CID offers a wide variety of professional development programs, including guided observations and consulting services.  Your child’s teacher or school administer may want to contact Abby Zoia at 314.977.0267 for more information about professional development opportunities. Your local public school district or listening and spoken language school for children who are deaf and hard of hearing may also offer resources for general education teachers with a child who is deaf or hard of hearing in their classroom.

All of the cochlear implant manufacturers offer excellent information about their devices. To connect with other parents who have children with cochlear implants, we highly recommend cicircle.org. 

We recommend the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing for parents who seek this kind of information. Find out if they have a chapter where you live.

Services begin when our intake coordinator contacts a family to help them navigate the process of enrolling in the early intervention program. One of the first steps is partnering parents with audiologists to ensure the child has optimal access to sound. Experienced CID parent educators provide family sessions in the home and other community settings and through teleintervention. Among other resources, CID parent educators use a CID-developed Domains of Knowledge Family Inventory as well as the CID Early Listening at Home curriculum.We also have a toddler class for group instruction and individual therapy. Upon request, we provide on-site support at CID for families living outside of our parent educators’ travel area when they visit CID for audiology appointments.

As a child approaches age two, the family and parent educator discuss candidacy for attending toddler class at CID. Toddler classes supplement home visits to maximize each child’s potential for developing age-appropriate skills through remediation and enrichment in all domains, including listening and spoken language. Toddler classes provide a combination of individual direct therapy and group learning opportunities. 

Our pre-k program has a dual focus: (1) listening, language and speech curricula and (2) a whole-child developmental curriculum, including strong emphasis on play-based learning and early literacy. We use a series of functional assessments for data collection and progress monitoring for each of the expected areas of delay for a child with hearing loss learning to listen and talk, including:

• Vocabulary: CID Early Childhood Vocabulary Rating Forms
• Syntax/Grammar: CID Teacher Assessment of Grammatical Structures (TAGS)
• Pragmatic Language: CID Preschool Pragmatic Language Rating Forms
• Language Related to Play: CID Preschool Symbolic Play Rating Forms
• Foundational Listening: CID Speech Perception Instructional Curriculum and Evaluation (SPICE)
• Real-World Listening: CID SPICE for Life Auditory Learning Curriculum
• Speech: CID Speech Skills Rating Forms

In addition to the developmental areas we anticipate will be delayed as a result of hearing loss, we monitor all developmental areas when considering the whole child. Our whole-child curriculum is based on the CID Preschool Developmental Rating Forms  (for children ages 3, 4 and 5), which allow for data collection and progress monitoring in the non-communicative domains—fine motor, gross motor, cognition, social and emotional, pre-academic and early literacy. The skills listed are pulled from a variety of sources—all based on developmentally appropriate practices set out by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). 

Our goal is to prepare our students to work and socialize alongside their peers with typical hearing in their local schools as soon as possible. The vocabulary, language, speech and early literacy tests we use are standardized on children with typical hearing, so results for our students who are deaf and hard of hearing can be compared to results achieved by children with typical hearing the same age. This comparison gives us a clear picture of each student’s capabilities. Some examples are:

• Receptive Vocabulary Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – 4^th Edition (PPVT-4)
• Expressive Vocabulary Test – Second Edition (EVT-2)
• Preschool Language Scale-IV (PLS-5)
• Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Preschool 2 (CELF-P2)
• Preschool Language Assessment Instrument-2 (PLAI-2)
• Systematic Analysis of Language Transcription (SALT)
• Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation 2 (GFTA-2)
• Test of Preschool Early Literacy (TOPEL)
• HearBuilder Story Retell Test

The primary CID school has three main goals: (1) continuing the development of listening, speech and language skills, (2) teaching content that aligns with general education programs and (3) teaching self-advocacy and social skills to help prepare students for transition into their home schools. We use a series of functional assessments for data collection and progress monitoring for each of the expected areas of delay for a child with hearing loss learning to listen and talk: 

• Syntax/Grammar: CID Teacher Assessment of Grammatical Structures (TAGS)
• Foundational Listening: CID Speech Perception Instructional Curriculum and Evaluation (SPICE)
• Real-World Listening: CID SPICE for Life Auditory Learning Curriculum
• Speech: CID Speech Skills Rating Forms

• Content: Common Core Standards and Grade Level Expectations Checklists for Missouri

Our goal is to transition students to their local schools as soon as possible. The vocabulary, language, speech, literacy and content tests we use are standardized on children with typical hearing, so results for our students who are deaf and hard of hearing can be compared to results achieved by children with typical hearing the same age. This comparison gives us a clear picture of each student’s capabilities. Some examples are:

• Receptive Vocabulary Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – 4^th Edition (PPVT-4)
• Expressive Vocabulary Test – Second Edition (EVT-2)
• Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-5)
• Systematic Analysis of Language Transcription (SALT)
• Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation 2 (GFTA-2)
• Woodcock Johnson Reading Achievement Test
• Stanford Achievement Test

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