The Scottish Sensory Centre at the Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh has launched a new project this week to investigate the views of families of deaf children living on a low income. ‘Telling It Like It Is’ is a project which gives families living on a low income the chance to explain and explore their views on raising a deaf child. The project website is here:

 

http://www.ssc.education.ed.ac.uk/research/tellingit/

Rachel O’Neill will be leading the project, working with Theresa Monaghan (Manchester), Jo Bowie (Glasgow) and Audrey Cameron (UoE) to conduct 30 interviews with families and three focus groups in Glasgow, Birmingham and London. The study has been funded by the National Deaf Children’s Society and received ethical approval from the Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh. Both Theresa and Jo have personal experience of living on a low income and raising a deaf child. They will be interviewing the family in their own homes or in another suitable nearby locations. We are looking for families from all over the UK. Audrey will be interviewing two Deaf families in BSL and we will work with community language interpreters for some families.

 

The aims of the study are to explore the challenges and barriers these families may face in gaining information about deafness, language and communication, and to investigate factors which can lead to successful outcomes for their deaf child’s language development. We are interested in families with deaf children under 12 so that there is a high chance the children will have gone through newborn screening.

If you would like to know more about the project please contact Rachel O’Neill [log in to unmask]

 

If you know of families which may like to participate, please send them the link to the project website. You can pass on Theresa’s phone number and email so that she can discuss with them when and where would be a suitable place to meet: [log in to unmask] Tel. 07731 396180

 

We are also approaching directors of education, so heads of school services for deaf children may receive information this way too.