Early Intervention & Communication Options

Singapore’s excellent Universal Newborn Hearing Screening enables congenital hearing loss to be identified shortly after birth. Early diagnosis and intervention can mean the difference between a child entering school with a language delay or with age appropriate language and concept development.

Research shows that children whose hearing losses are identified in the first 6 months of life and who receive immediate intervention can develop normal spoken language equal to their fully hearing peers.

Here is an interesting 2010 Webinar from The Children’s Hospital of Boston on understanding hearing loss and early intervention. This Webinar provides further information on early intervention and the research studies that support the fact that significantly better language comprehension is achieved where intervention occurs after early detection.

Early intervention in Singapore can take many forms and may include:

• Identification of communication options and scheduling of the necessary services to support language acquisition
• Training the family to ‘talk’ to baby
• Helping baby to understand and be understood

In Singapore, there are three hospital centres dedicated to providing Singapore families with early intervention support: