Page 23 - SEN116 January-February 2022

Hearing impairment
About the author
Frances Clark, Senior Auditory Verbal Therapist and clinical lead for the AVT UK London centre.
avuk.org @frances_avt @francesavuk
How can it be accessed?
Families can self-refer by contacting info@avuk.org or call 01869 325000.
“AVUK was a safe and welcoming environment where we could share our concerns with people who knew what Rafi was going through and were best positioned to help him. It gave us support, it gave us answers and it gave us techniques that we could apply every day to support our child.”
Kenza and Antoine, Rafi’s parents
audiology team. This ensures that the child has full access to the speech spectrum and can therefore learn language through listening.
How does Auditory Verbal Therapy differ from other types of speech and language therapy?
AVT concentrates on developing the auditory cortex rather than relying solely or partly on visual cues and therefore therapy is delivered primarily through listening.
Parents/caregivers are coached in the use of Auditory Verbal strategies and techniques in everyday activities and play so that every opportunity is used to develop their child’s listening brain and spoken language skills.
AVT is an early intervention programme. By working intensively with the child in their first few years they should require much less additional support for the rest of their life.
AVT aims to develop the child’s social skills and theory of mind (the ability to understand that their mind differs from another’s). This prepares them to make and keep friends at school.
Is it effective?
Research from Australia and the USA indicates that children who have received a programme of AVT, develop spoken language commensurate with their aged match hearing peers and progress at the same rate for listening, spoken language, self-esteem, literacy and numeracy.
Research from Denmark demonstrated that children receiving Auditory Verbal Therapy had advanced spoken language skills compared to other children who received standard early intervention and AVT improved outcomes for children with cochlear implants.
Another study compared Auditory Verbal Therapy to Oral Communication (OC) and Total Communication (TC) approaches for developing language. The results indicated that significantly greater numbers of children in the AV group obtained standard scores within normal limits than children in the OC and TC groups.
Auditory Verbal UK belongs to First Voice which is a consortium of Early Intervention Centres from Australia, UK, New Zealand and South Africa. The outcomes for these centres were collated in 2018 and the results indicated that 86% of children with hearing loss and no additional difficulties, achieved a spoken language score within or above the range for typically hearing children.
In the UK, approximately 80% of all children who spent at least two years on the programme achieved age appropriate language. On average, the children who had additional needs as well as deafness, doubled their rate of language development, and one in two children reached age-appropriate spoken language at the end of their programme. For children, both with and without additional needs, the earlier they accessed the
“80% of all children who spent at least two years on the programme achieved age appropriate language”
programme, the better the prognosis for language development. It has also been found that 97% of deaf children without additional needs reached at least age appropriate spoken language at the end of a programme of Auditory Verbal Therapy.
During lockdown in 2020, all therapy was moved to tele-therapy which was delivered via Zoom. The effectiveness of telepractice was measured and the children showed no difference in their rate of language development on a formal assessment. Prior to lockdown, 60% of parents were unsure of the effectiveness of tele-therapy whereas during lockdown, after receiving it, 10% of parents were unsure of the effectiveness.
The success of AVT via tele-therapy is largely because of the coaching nature. It is what the parents DO that matters, the therapist coaches them on how to integrate AVT into their everyday lives.
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