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Public Education Options in Florida

In Florida, there are many public educational options for children (3-21) who are deaf, hard of hearing or deaf-blind, which range from the state residential school (the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind) in St. Augustine to full mainstreaming in a general education classroom and many options in between, depending on the student's educational, communication and social needs.

General education teachers and teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing work together to meet the goals of the student's individual education plan (IEP.)  Educational interpreters are available in order to facilitate communication.  Educational audiology services promote access to communication and instruction through the development of audition and the use of amplification. Special projects funded through federal and state allocations address the unique communication and technology needs of students who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Useful links:

There are also some private schools in Florida which serve students through John McKay school choice scholarships.

 

Children's Hearing Help Fund

New Donation Box on Driver's License Renewal

On May 24th Governor Bush signed a new option into law for low income children to have access to better hearing. A significant barrier to successful intervention outcomes has become very apparent since the implementation of the enactment of Florida's Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Law, Statute 383.815. Following diagnosis, it is not unusual for some infants to experience delays of 6 months or more prior to hearing evaluation and hearing aid fitting due to a variety of issues primarily related to funding and/or parental uncertainty of how to proceed. The new law authorized the Department of Motor Vehicles to include a $1 donation check-off box on every driver?s license renewal form that allows funds to be collected to aid families who don't have the means to pay for hearing aids for children who have been found to have hearing loss.

The Children's Hearing Help Fund (CHHF) will be used to provide assistance for qualifying families with minor children, from newborns to eighteen years of age for services such as hearing evaluations, loaner hearing devices, permanent hearing devices or the ongoing maintenance and replacement of the devices if necessary until the child reaches eighteen years of age. Hearing loss is the most common birth defect with three out of every 1000 newborns being found to have a permanent hearing problem that causes them to be at high risk for developing communication delays unless early help is provided to their families. Florida can expect approximately 600 new children to be confirmed as hearing impaired annually. Approximately 37% of families have insurance and/or financial resources however insurance rarely covers even a portion of hearing aids and most families with young children cannot readily afford to pay for hearing aids, each of which can cost as much as a refrigerator ($1000-$3000) and may need to be replaced every 3 years. Approximately 43% of children will have Medicaid coverage that could be applied to meet the cost of permanent amplification devices and an additional 20% are found to be from financially needy families that have no resources available. Therefore many families are faced with trying to purchase expensive hearing aids, typically 5-6 times before the child becomes an adult.

Charitable funding sources for families to turn to for assistance with purchasing amplification for children have historically been very limited. Early intervention and quality education is necessary to prevent developmental delays in language and learning. The Children's Hearing Help Fund will exist in order to provide the necessary funding to enable children from financially needy families to obtain amplification for their children (loaner or permanent) within 30 days of recommendation for hearing aid fitting, when no other funding options are available.

The Children's Hearing Help Fund is administered by the Sertoma Speech & Hearing Foundation of Florida, Inc.

For more information contact:
Craig McCart, Executive Director
1-866-999-2443 or visit Website: www.childrenshearinghelpfund.org

For more information about the HEARING AID LOAN BANK FOR INFANTS AND TODDLERS please click here to download the pdf:

  • Nationally, three out of every 1000 newborns have a hearing loss. It is the most common birth defect.
  • Even mild hearing loss or hearing loss in only one ear, if undetected, has substantial detrimental consequences. Research shows that children with hearing loss in one ear are 10 times as likely to be held back at least one grade level compared to matched group of children with normal hearing. Research notes that children identified with hearing loss at birth are, by the time they enter school, one to two years developmentally ahead of their hearing impaired peers who were not diagnosed until after they were six months old.
  • Before universal newborn hearing screening the average age at which children were diagnosed with hearing loss was 2.5 years. Very important speech-language development occurs significantly earlier and these children frequently required intensive special instruction throughout all their school years.
  • Through identification of hearing loss in the first 3 months and by working with the parents and caregivers to communicate effectively with their child thereby preventing delays in language, cognitive and social development these early identified children have the opportunity to develop on par with unimpaired peers. Without amplification and early intervention services by 6 months of age, lifelong delays in communication and learning may be expected.
  • By the time a child with hearing loss graduates from high school, more than $400,000 per child can be saved in special education costs if the child is identified early and given appropriate educational, medical, and audiological services.
  • Only by continuing consistent use of appropriate and well functioning amplification, can children with hearing loss continue to have the opportunity to access teacher instruction in classrooms using their remaining hearing. When the hearing aids of a school-age child need to be replaced or repaired, every day that the child is unable to hear optimally can be like a day they are absent from school!

Information and statistics courtesy of the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management - Utah State University (NCHAM) or the National Institute on Deafness and Communicative Disorders (NIDCD).

 

Descriptive & Captioned Media

OPEN LETTER RE:
DESCRIBED & CAPTIONED MEDIA PROGRAM
READ CAPTIONS ACROSS AMERICA

Fri, 08 Feb 2008
From: Thomas Lohman
Subject: Described and Captioned Media Program/Read Captions Across America

Good morning,

I am the communications services specialist for the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP), a non-profit organization funded by the U.S. Department of Education and administered by the National Association of the Deaf. Our primary function is to serve as a free-loan lending service for accessible (captioned and described) educational media to benefit K-12 students who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, or deaf-blind. We also advocate for increased accessibility in educational media, maintain a clearinghouse of information about captioning and description, and evaluate captioning and description vendors who wish to appear on the U.S. Department of Education’s approved vendors list.

I’ve noted that the State DB Listserv is primarily intended for directors of state deaf-blind programs. Since our service is educational in nature, and completely free of charge for parents, teachers, and others involved with educating qualifying students (our information services are available to everyone, regardless of relationship to qualifying students), we were hopeful that you might post a message to parents, letting them know about our service, which has been quite useful for our thousands of members, many of whom are faced with a severe shortage (or complete absence) of accessible educational media in their children’s schools.

Our Web site (www.dcmp.org) provides a wealth of information about our services, and those interested in applying for our free-loan service should consult our site to sign up.

The second purpose of my message today is concerning Read Captions Across America (RCAA - www.dcmp.org/about/prelations/events.aspx), an annual campaign (now in its third year) affiliated with the National Education Association’s (NEA) Read Across America campaign (www.nea.org/readacross). For anyone not familiar with Read Across America, it is celebrated every year on the birthday of Dr. Seuss (this year, March 3rd), and its purpose is to increase awareness of childhood literacy. Our RCAA campaign stresses the utility of reading captions to the goal of improving literacy. On our RCAA Web page (again, www.dcmp.org/about/prelations/events.aspx), we have linked a multitude of informative information about the literacy benefits of captioning, as well as a host of useful materials for parents and teachers (and others) to utilize in planning RCAA-related events.

Also, this year, we were pleased to learn that 20th Century Fox plans to release the CGI animated film “Horton Hears a Who” on March 14th, which is right on the heels of RCAA. Even more exciting is that “Horton” will be released with captions and description to participating theaters (those which have the MoPix Rear Window Captioning or DTS-CSS Subtitling system installed). We are hopeful that a groundswell of support for accessible films will encourage the major studios and distributors to include accessibility in more films.

DCMP’s January 2008 newsletter, just completed, provides a quick look at RCAA, including information about “Horton.” You can access the newsletter at www.dcmp.org/outreach/newsletter/january2008.html.

As stated above, we hope that you will consider posting some (or all) of this information for State-DB’s members. Please feel free to draw from the Public Relations page on dcmp.org (www.dcmp.org/about/prelations/default.aspx), where logos, quick “blurbs” and other materials are available.

Thank you for considering DCMP, and for the service you provide to your members! If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me directly.

Thomas F. Lohman
Communications Services Specialist
National Association of the Deaf
Described and Captioned Media Program
1447 East Main St
Spartanburg, SC 29307
(800) 237-6213 ext. 222  VOICE
(800) 237-6819  TTY "Thom"
(800) 538-5636  FAX
dcmp.org

 

 

Useful Links and Resources:


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