Toddler classes
At our Family Centre our toddler nursery services support
the listening and language development of young deaf children
from 18 months of age to around 2½ years of age.
We aim to engage and help stimulate each child’s residual hearing
to help nurture strong listening skills and to foster their
developing communication skills.
About our toddler classes
At our Family Centre, we provide nursery services for young deaf toddlers from 18 months of age to around 2½ years of age, at which point they move on to our preschool classes.
Our toddler classes last for 2½ hours – parents attend the classes once or twice a week with their children. Through these services we aim to nurture strong listening skills that will equip them on their journey to developing speech and language.
These services are provided by our experienced team of Teachers, Speech and Language Therapists, Classroom Assistants and Regular Volunteers.
Supporting the whole family
We believe that one of the most important aspects of our toddler classes is the support that parents give to each other.
During their time attending our toddler nursery parents and children form relationships and friendships with each other which often last for many years.
We also support parents with information booklets 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.
Specialist Speech and Language Therapy
We offer each child in our Toddler classes access to our Specialist Speech and Language Therapy service. One of our Therapists will see each child on a regular basis and will work closely with colleagues on our Education team to monitor and develop the child’s receptive language skills (what they can understand) and expressive language skills (what they can say), their speech clarity and their social skills.
The Therapist will also give practical demonstrations and activities so parents can provide further language-learning opportunities at home. With parental permission, our Therapists will also liaise with other professionals working with the child to ensure the best outcomes.
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:
£6
We currently request a parental contribution of £6 per toddler session.
Parents can pay for the fees in a variety of ways, including using Early Years Funding or Childcare Vouchers / Tax-Free Childcare. If you are experiencing financial difficulty and feel that you will be unable to pay these fees please let us know.
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 for deaf toddlers, which we subsidise using other sources of charitable income such as donations and grants.
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.
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.”