Imagine a world of silence……
No matter how hard you may try,
can you truly imagine it?
The truth is that deafness is isolating.
For those children & young people who are born deaf, deprivation of sound also means deprivation of language. For a deaf child the process of language development is a long slow process. This means that many deaf children & young people have delayed language and this has obvious effects on social, emotional and educational development.
Sadly for many deaf and hearing impaired people this also means dealing with feelings of exclusion, the inability to participate fully and much frustration. But deafness today does not need to be so isolating. After all, 1 in 7 people in the United Kingdom have a hearing impairment of some degree & 1 in 4 children experience hearing loss at some time in their life.
Lollipop was established in 2004 to help combat such isolation and to offer social support to children & young people with hearing loss and their families.
It is a surprising fact that 9 out of 10 children with a hearing impairment are actually born to families with no previous experience of deafness and most of them attend their local mainstream schools.
Inclusion into local schools means the deaf children and young people have local friends who provide good language models and help with language development. However, for many they are the only child with a hearing loss in their school or family environment and this can therefore lead to isolation and problems with deaf identity.
This is where Lollipop can benefit such children and their families.
