Working with Deaf Children and Young People

This book highlights the wide impact of deafness on many aspects of communication for deaf children and young people, and those around them. It explores input, semantics, grammar, and speech, and how you as a practitioner can apply this knowledge in different contexts, including for early years support. Each chapter considers the impact of deafness on key communication components and provides you with opportunities to reflect on and extend knowledge and practice in each area. A range of strategies and activities are presented that can enhance the support you offer. Key features include: - a framework to guide you to use your knowledge and the available resources to maximum effect with deaf children and young people - clear explanations throughout built on wide research evidence to enable you to employ approaches that will make a difference - a set of adaptable checklists to provide efficient assessment to help planning - a focus on supporting communicative independence in collaboration with each deaf child and young person Written in an accessible, engaging format, this book equips practitioners with a range of tools to support the development of communicative independence and includes reflective questions to consolidate knowledge. It is a must-read for any practitioner working with deaf children and young people and their families.

Sarah Beazley is a specialist speech and language therapist (SLT) who has worked with deaf people since 1983 and as a lecturer on undergraduate and postgraduate professional courses. She has written several publications in the area of deafness and disability and is a visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh. Judy Halden was dual qualified as an SLT and a teacher for deaf children. She worked with deaf people from 1978, setting up and running specialist speech and language services for deaf children and for both deaf and deafened adults. She was an adviser, lecturer, and supervisor on the Hertfordshire University course for teachers of deaf children, as well as an honorary research associate and lecturer at University College London's Department of Psychology and Language Sciences.

Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Input Chapter 3: Auditory access to sound Chapter 4: Conversational skills: discourse and pragmatics Chapter 5: Linking grammar and semantics to communicative independence Chapter 6: Intelligibility: listeners, watchers, and phonetics Chapter 7: Some final words Chapter 8: Resources Index