Better Hearing & Speech Month 2015:
Early Intervention Counts

2015 May is Better Hearing & Speech Month: Early Intervention Counts

Each May, The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) highlights Better Hearing & Speech Month (BHSM) to raise awareness about communication disorders. The 2015 theme is “Early Intervention Counts.” The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) supports states in providing early intervention services for infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families (Part C) and special education and related services for preschool children with disabilities (Part B, Section 619). Results of a recent survey of ASHA’s membership revealed that 45% of expert respondents reported a lack of awareness as the number one barrier to early detection of communication disorders. Research has shown that early detection is critical to addressing communication disorders. Delayed intervention can result in delayed development, as well as poor academic or career performance.

The importance of human communication—talking, reading, listening and interacting—is paramount to children’s overall development, including their academic and social success. The importance of human interaction is all the more true in this age of technology, in which “smart” devices occupy an ever-increasing amount of time, attention and prominence in the lives of infants to teens. For more information and resources about early detection of communication disorders, visit ASHA’s Web site (www.asha.org) and its Identify the Signs campaign (identifythesigns.org), which includes some interesting articles below:

Download the 2015 Better Hearing & Speech Month poster:

Download the 2015 Better Hearing & Speech Month poster

 

The ASHA materials contained herein are not an endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education and herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the United States Department of Education.

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Dawn Ellis is an Education Program Specialist in the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education.

3 Comments

  1. wow I was hoping that it has not changed to old idea included for early child developing for whom are deaf and hard hearing that it must stay old way to keep the deaf communities and institutes schools for th deaf so that they feel reality with deaf and hard of hearing as a real world The behind program is not idea what u tried to change new program as cochlea planted children when they born deaf It’s very bad situations at the hospitals for new parent with deaf newborns u need to stop it. We re all deaf and we re very proud to be deaf One thing I want to share w you is that it should have speech therapists for them to learn to speak at the early child development at the deaf institutes. It’s very different program than disabled who are very dependent on person aids They are not in the same level in the world Everything are in the different level of child development in how smart they deaf children are and u can t change them They would be very happy with deaf classes they access to communicate each other

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