Through their frank personal accounts, thirteen families share the challenges and joy of teaching their profoundly deaf children to listen (with the aid of cochlear implants) and to speak. Each journey is different, reflecting the diversity of deafness, and the families’ different cultures and aspirations for their children.

The families describe what it was like at the start, when they did not know what the future held for their children or what might be possible, and how far they have come since those fraught early days. As a resource for newly diagnosed families, and the professionals who support them, this book is both inspiring and reassuring, whilst being open and honest about the obstacles faced along the way.

Collated by Estelle Gerrett, an Auditory Verbal therapist with thirty years’ experience of working with profoundly deaf children, including her own son, ‘Voices of Hope’ features personal accounts from a range of families who have faced different diagnoses and different social and cultural challenges. One thing all the families have in common is that they have worked – sometimes against enormous odds – to give their deaf children the best listening and spoken language outcome they could achieve through the communication mode of Auditory Verbal therapy.

The book acknowledges that sign language is also a full and rich language of its own, and that choosing a communication approach for their deaf child(ren) is an intensely personal decision for each and every family, not to be judged by others. But for those families who wish to follow a listening and spoken language approach, this book is a beacon of hope, showing how – with a lot of hard work from all involved – their deaf children can be part of the hearing, speaking world.

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