Children's Choice for Hearing and Talking - Sacramento
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Mission Statement
Children’s Choice for Hearing and Talking Sacramento (CCHAT) is a unique listening and spoken language program for children with hearing loss, birth to third grade. The purpose of CCHAT’s program is to remove language barriers so children with hearing loss are empowered with the speech skills to access a lifetime of scholastic, vocational, and social success. With the help of hearing aids and cochlear implants, the Center’s mission is to teach deaf and hard of hearing children to listen, develop spoken language, and speak for themselves. Once age-appropriate speech and language skills are achieved, through daily speech therapy sessions and classroom instruction, CCHAT helps to transition students into a typical educational setting.
About This Cause
CCHAT is a leader in auditory/oral education for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children, 0-9 years old. Since 1996, the Center has been committed to bringing speech, language, and listening skills to children with hearing loss. All services, including academic instruction, daily speech therapy, audiological services, and parent education, are provided at no cost. CCHAT primarily serves the greater Sacramento region, inclusive of nine counties and approximately 20% of the state of California. CCHAT is the only program of its kind northeast of San Francisco. Due to the unique services that CCHAT provides, school districts and parent/infant county programs contract with CCHAT to provide these services with the understanding that children with hearing loss who develop spoken language will have the opportunity to participate fully in mainstream school and their community. CCHAT serves the needs of an ever-growing demographic. 2-4 of every 1000 babies are diagnosed with significant hearing loss, making it the most frequently occurring birth defect. With over 50,000 annual births in the nine counties typically served by CCHAT, mandatory newborn hearing screening will result in the identification of approximately 150 newborns/infants with significant hearing loss who need to be linked with an early intervention program. With early intervention services, the negative impacts associated with hearing loss can be diminished and even eliminated. A majority of CCHAT’s students come from an underserved population, and CCHAT prides itself on never turning away a child with hearing loss in need of listening and spoken language (LSL) services. About 67% of CCHAT students are racial/ethnic minorities and 28% do not primarily speak English in the home. Many CCHAT families are considered low-moderate income and rely on the assistance available through California Children’s Services (CCS-Medical) and seven of our families travel more than 100 miles a day to attend CCHAT due to a lack of services in their area. CCHAT is happy to provide its life-changing services at no cost to the families in our program. Children who are DHH, birth-third grade, and their families directly benefit from our organization. Hearing loss in infants is a “neurodevelopmental emergency” due to the limited time the brain has to make auditory neural connections. If meaningful sound is not effectively given to children within their first three years, the auditory neural connections within their brains are “pruned” away, making oral language development difficult (Anderson, 2011). The Center’s specialized cognitive-based programs support children with hearing loss from the moment of diagnosis through mainstreaming into neighborhood school settings with age-appropriate speech and language skills. Families are the key to ensuring children who are DHH will be exposed to a highly verbal home environment so that they can achieve linguistic milestones similar to their typical peers (Anderson, 2011). The Center empowers parents with the tools necessary to keep their child’s neural auditory pathways open. Families work in group settings and with speech-language pathologists and classroom teachers to receive weekly training on cochlear implant and hearing aid best practices, as well as audiological education and management. Educational topics promote hearing health through instruction on amplification wear and maintenance, the importance of routine follow-ups for audiological care, reading/interpreting an audiogram, completing an amplification listening check, the auditory/listening hierarchy, and promoting a child’s listening skills and speech developmental milestones. CCHAT provides highly specialized, intensive intervention services. School districts and parent/infant county programs contract with CCHAT to provide these services with the understanding that children with hearing loss who develop spoken language will have the opportunity to participate fully in mainstream school and their community. Children who are deaf and hard of hearing are at risk for serious reading deficiencies. (Carney & Moeller, 1998) Children with hearing loss who acquire spoken language have a much easier time learning to read and write, which is critical to learning in all academic areas.