Listen! groups

At our Family Centre we provide monthly Listen! groups for
children from birth to around three years of age who have
unilateral (one-sided), conductive (temporary) or unaided deafness,
who have Down syndrome, or who have complex needs.

About our Listen! groups

The Listen! group services are delivered by members of our skilled and experienced Education team providing:

advice, guidance and support
interactive games and activities to encourage early communication, language and listening
demonstrations of activities to use at home
resources for parents to take away
music and movement
opportunities to share experiences with other families

Through these services we aim to engage and stimulate these children throughout their earliest years, helping nurture strong listening skills that will equip them in their journey to developing speech and language.

Listen! group for children with unilateral, conductive or unaided deafness

We provide a support group for babies and preschool children aged up to three years old with persistent ‘glue ear’, unilateral (one-sided) or unaided deafness and their families:

Glue ear (conductive hearing loss) is a very common condition in young children, and can have a major impact on their speech and language development.
Unilateral deafness (deafness on one side) can also impact on speech and language development.

Our Listen! groups for children with unilateral, conductive or unaided deafness are friendly and supportive, providing you and your child with lots of expert advice and practical support.

“Thank you for all that you do to help our son with his unilateral hearing loss. We will be eternally grateful for the opportunity to learn at The Elizabeth Foundation.”

Listen! group for children with Down syndrome

As many as 80% of children with Down syndrome are identified as being deaf at some point in their childhood. We provide monthly support groups for babies and preschool children aged up to three years old with Down syndrome.

Our Listen! groups for children with Down syndrome provide practical help and guidance on how families can support listening and early language development for children with Down syndrome who may be at more risk of being deaf.

“I have learned so much from attending the groups and my son loves it! Good listening is the foundation of good learning and this group is helping us to help our son get the best possible start.”

Listen! group for children with complex needs

We offer monthly sessions for children who have a degree of deafness alongside additional and more complex needs. As well as having over 45 years of experience as an organisation supporting young deaf children, many of our team have extensive experience supporting children and families with multiple diagnoses.

Our Listen! groups for children with complex needs provide a warm, caring and supportive environment for families, with activities delivered in a way that is appropriate to the abilities of each child.

Family support

We believe that one of the most important aspects of our Listen! groups is the support that parents give to each other. During their time attending our Listen! groups parents and children form relationships and friendships with each other which often last for many years.

We also support parents with information leaflets which cover topics such as hearing tests, audiograms and deafness, and listening and language development. In this way, we give parents the opportunity to gain the knowledge and skills they need to foster their child’s overall development, and to share with others the feelings, triumphs and obstacles their family is experiencing.

Joining our Listen! groups

If you have a child aged up to 3 years old with one-sided or temporary deafness, Down syndrome or complex needs and would like to join one of our monthly Listen! groups, please contact us.

Costs

We ask parents/carers to make a contribution towards the costs of providing this service, although these sessional fees are heavily subsidised by our charitable income to ensure as many children as possible can benefit from our services:

£5

We currently charge £5 per monthly session for our Listen! groups.

We have done everything we can to keep these fees as low as possible, and they do not cover the full cost of providing this specialist service, which we subsidise using other sources of charitable income such as donations and grants. If you are experiencing financial difficulty and feel that you will be unable to pay these fees please let us know.

The Elizabeth Foundation is a registered charity and we rely on income from a range of sources to support as many deaf children and their families as possible, wherever they live. Please consider making a donation if you would like to support the costs of providing this service.

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Ofsted ‘Outstanding’

Our education services are rated as ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted:

“Children thrive in this exciting, education environment”

“There are high expectations for every child and children make excellent progress in their learning and development.”

“Children are incredibly well supported to progress to their next stage of education.”

“Staff expertly develop children’s listening and communication skills. They skilfully plan activities to introduce new language to children.”

“Staff have high ambitions for children and they deliver an exceptionally well-planned curriculum.”

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