Caring for Hearing aid Use in Babies (CHerUB) is a National Deaf Children’s Society funded project that aims to develop a programme of support to help parents establish consistent hearing aid use with babies aged 0-2 years.
The project came about in response to research showing that babies are not wearing their hearing aids as often as they need to for optimal benefits for spoken language outcomes, and that families face many challenges when it comes to establishing consistent hearing aid use.
As a first step, we are currently working on getting a better understanding of these challenges by exploring existing research, interviewing parents, audiologists, and teachers of the deaf for their perspectives, and circulating a UK-wide survey to families.
Equipped with this information, we will then co-produce a programme of support with parents, teachers of the deaf, and audiologists.
If you are interested in getting involved, we would love to hear from you! Involvement from families, teachers of the deaf, and audiologists is a very important part of the CHerUB project, as it means we can ensure consistent messages across practice and develop a successful programme of support for families.
If you are interested, you can get involved by:
- taking part in an interview about your experiences (families and professionals welcome!)
- helping us to reach families throughout the project about getting involved
- inputting into the development of our programme of support when we reach this point, such as attending focus groups (families and professionals welcome!)
For more information, visit our website: www.cherubproject.co.uk or contact Dr Ciara Kelly at the Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness (University of Manchester) on [email protected] or 0161 275 3376. You can also sign up to our mailing list here to be kept updated!
