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THERAPY SERVICES
Auditory Verbal Therapy
We offer specialised parent coaching according to auditory verbal therapy principles to families of deaf babies and pre-schoolers. Auditory Verbal Therapy is a highly specialist early intervention parent coaching programme which helps parents feel confident in how to raise their child with hearing loss to develop spoken language through listening. We work with children from as early as a few months old. We are fortunate in the UK to have the newborn hearing screen and there is no such thing as ‘too early’ to start hearing habilitation. Sophie Williams volunteers for the charity Auditory Verbal UK, where she is mentored towards certification as a Listening and Spoken Language Specialist certified Auditory Verbal Therapist (LSLCert AVT). With your consent, sessions are recorded and watched by Certified Auditory Verbal Therapists at AVUK as part of Sophie’s training. Parent coaching according to auditory verbal therapy principles is a 2 year early intervention programme. You have lots of communication options for your deaf child, one is not better than the other. For more information head to the National Deaf Children's Society (NDCS).
What does the programme include?
Get in touch to arrange an initial free 30 minute telephone consultation to discuss your child’s hearing journey.
Initial meeting
We invite all families for an initial meeting where we will gather a comprehensive case history and introduce you to some of the auditory verbal principles. We will discuss your hopes and ambitions for your child and whether nurturing listening and spoken language is the right approach for your family.
Baseline and review assessment
If you decide to start the programme we will carry out a baseline assessment of your child’s listening, language and communication. We will review their progress every 6 months and we will discuss this with you. We provide a summary report after each assessment. A detailed report for example to support an Education and Health Care Plan application can be requested for an additional fee.  Our goal is to the close the language gap between your child’s hearing and chronological age so that they start school with speech and language in line with their hearing peers.
Parent only meetings
We understand that a lot happens outside of our sessions. We provide one-two parent meetings a year where we can discuss without interruptions how the programme is going and any thoughts you may have. We use these discussions to tailor our intervention. When you sign up to the programme we become a team. We may be the experts in listening and spoken language development but you are the expert in your child.
Fortnightly or monthly parent coaching
If you live in the north of England then we work from Butterflies OT in Roundhay, Leeds. If you're further away, then parent coaching according to AV principles can be effectively delivered online. Sessions last for 60 minutes. We schedule sessions over 39 weeks, taking breaks for holidays (this is equivalent to UK school term time). Therapy is a truly collaborative process, we coach you to nurture your child’s spoken language through listening. This is important because children learn language from those they love. We will support you to maximize your daily interactions. The auditory verbal strategies will help your child to make the most of their state-of-the-art hearing technology to stimulate their brain with sound. You can choose to donate some of your scheduled sessions to your child’s nursery or preschool or purchase these in addition.