Recognizing that a baby’s family is central to advancing development, our team partners with you to share ways you can incorporate language, speaking, and communication into your typical daily routines. Your child’s individualized early intervention plan is guided by the information we gather from you and your baby during our evaluations, assessments, and ongoing intervention sessions.
Evaluations and Assessments
The Sound Start Babies, a uniquely qualified specialty team with expertise in identifying the needs of infants and toddlers with hearing loss and their families, provides comprehensive evaluations and assessments. This specialty targeted evaluation team, one of only a few approved by the NJ Early Intervention System, uses its expertise to connect babies with hearing loss and their families to appropriate ongoing early intervention services. Using the information gathered from the evaluation and assessment processes, our team works with your family to develop an effective plan of ongoing early intervention services tailored to address your child’s individual strengths and needs and your family’s priorities.
All children with hearing loss are eligible for early intervention services. The process begins with an initial evaluation conducted by two professionals from different specialty backgrounds. The Sound Start Babies evaluation team acknowledges that caregivers are the experts on their children and seeks to understand the family’s concerns and priorities for their child’s development. Partnering with your family, our team looks at your child’s development in several different areas using both observation and evaluation tools designed for very young children. Should a more in depth look at an area of development be needed, an assessment by an expert in that area is then made available (e.g. communication, gross motor, and fine motor). The Sound Start Babies is often asked by New Jersey Early Intervention to conduct a Hearing Assessment when a specialized evaluation team is not available or when a child’s hearing loss is discovered after early intervention services have begun.
Educational and Therapy Services
The Sound Start Babies Team, including Teachers of the Deaf, speech/language pathologists, audiologist, and occupational and physical therapists, brings a wealth of knowledge and skills to work with your family and your child with hearing loss. The team members meet the rigorous standards of the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing and have participated in ongoing professional training to keep abreast of the latest research in working with young children with hearing loss. The frequency of visits and the type of specialist you will work with is determined by you and your child’s specific needs. The team has qualified providers of the Listening and Spoken Language approach and the Total Communication approach. The Sound Start Babies Audiologist is available to counsel families as they navigate the diagnostic process and obtain appropriate assistive listening technology. Should your child have additional developmental needs our qualified occupational and physical therapists work closely with their team colleagues to provide continuity of thoughtful coordinated care for your child.
Community & Childcare Support
For families whose babies with hearing loss attend community-based or in-home childcare programs, Sound Start Babies can provide services in these natural environments. Our practitioners partner with the child’s daycare providers to train them regarding: care, use, and troubleshooting of the child’s hearing technology, conducting daily listening checks, optimizing the acoustic environment, implementing best practice strategies for supporting communication development in young children with hearing loss, and incorporating sensory motor strategies in the classroom (as applicable). Group in-services for daycare staff are also offered.
Grant funding has allowed the Sound Start Babies to purchase Phonak Roger Soundfield FM Systems, which are loaned to childcare programs under the guidance of our pediatric audiologist. This remote microphone technology improves the signal to noise ratio in a classroom, appropriately amplifying the caregiver’s voice over background noise and giving a child with hearing loss optimal auditory access to the caregiver’s language models.
