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EAR-SPLITTING's

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EDUCATIONAL PLACEMENT COUNSELOR ?

Wendy Underhill, columnist, "Simply living", THE BOULDER WEEKLY, 6 February 1997, notes that "the days of the one-size-fits-all schools are long gone" and suggsts that what we need "is an educational placement counselor" (EPC). Typical counsel goes something like this:

Counselor: "What about [your child's] auditory processing abilities?"

Parent: "His ears work fine. From the other side of the house he can hear me whisper that I've bought donuts. (Pause.) Except, now that I think of this, there might be a problem. If I ask him to take his plate into the kitchen, he only hears me if I raise my voice."

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HEARING SCREENING PROPOSED FOR COLORADO

Excerpts from Ann Schrader's report, THE DENVER POST, 6 February 1997:

Mandatory tests of all Colorado new-borns would identify problems before infants enter critical years of language development.

Sixty percent of the 55,000 babies born in Colorado annually are routinely tested for hearing problems.... Universal hearing screening (up from 60 to 85-90 percent) is the goal of this bill and of a $1.3 million federal grant that establishes a Colorado-based center to promote infant hearing impairment services.

The US Public Health Service (PHS) awarded this 4-year grant to the University of Colorado at Boulder to coordinate the project [principal director Christine Yoshinaga-Itano] in Colorado and 16 other states. This project is a collaboration between Children's Hospital, CU Health Sciences Center, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE). [Arlene Stredler-Brown runs the statewide Colorado Home Intervention Program (CHIP) which assists parents of Deaf children and which is finally considering or beginning hiring "facilitators" (i.e., home visitors) who are themselves also Deaf.]

The grant sets up the national Marion Downs Center for Infant Hearing (MDCIH) "to promote programs for screening, diagnosis, and treatment of hearing babies". Marion Downs of Denver helped pioneer new-born screening in Colorado.

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