Soroptimists Caroline Munro and Claire Gamon improving the lives of deaf children and their families
Club Membe
rs were treated to a really interesting evening in March ably led by Caroline Munro and Claire Gamon, two of our Members who work with children who are deaf and their parents. Caroline works for the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital in London and Claire works for Hertfordshire Education. When a child from Hertfordshire is identified by Caroline as having hearing loss then she works with Claire for the next stages of support at home and in the community.
During the evening we learnt why identifying hearing loss early is important (for adults as well as for children), what happens next, and how we can all play our part in being deaf aware.
They used multi media to explain everything clearly and even demonstrated to us how a cochlea implant works with models.
Some of the facts we learnt that evening: all newborn babies are now screened for hearing loss; 1 in a thousand babies are born with hearing problems; there are 45,000 deaf children in the UK; 11 million adults have hearing loss (1 in 6) – 900,000 of whom are deaf; more than 70% of over 70 years-old and 40% of over 50 years-old have some kind of hearing loss; it takes adults 10 years to identify they have a hearing problem that needs to be addressed.
Useful tip – check someone’s understanding by asking a question about the subject you have been talking about – not “did you hear me?”.
The evening was led by the Club’s Learning Opportunities/Education Team – below is some background to provide context for Soroptimist projects.
Soroptimist International has a Programme Focus for our work which is agreed by all parts of the organisation. This provides the structure. Please have a look at the Soroptimist International Great Britain and Ireland website www.sigbi.org under Programme Focus 2015-2019 for full details.
Soroptimists are women who work to improve the lives of women and girls through education, empowerment and enabling opportunities, in the following areas: Education, Elimination of violence, Economic empowerment, Food security, Healthcare, Environmental sustainability/water and sanitation, Conflict resolution/peace promotion, Disaster mitigation and relief.