JCPSLP Vol 16 Issue 1 2014

Translating research into practice

Communication choices: Translating research to practice for professionals working with children with hearing loss Kathryn Crowe and Sharynne McLeod

When children are diagnosed with hearing loss, their families begin making many decisions, including whether their children will use speech or sign, and if they are multilingual, what languages they will use with their children. Parents frequently consult with health and education professionals concerning the best communication pathway for their children and their families. This paper is a translational summary of four studies investigating the communication choices of children (n = 406) with hearing loss and their parents (n = 792) who were participating in the Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with Hearing Impairment (LOCHI) study in Australia. Parents reported on the factors that were influential in their decision- making about whether their children with hearing loss would communicate using speech, sign, and/or more than one spoken language. The influences parents reported included advice from professionals, children’s access to speech through audition, children’s intervention experiences, children’s future opportunities, practicalities of communication, and creating a sense of belonging for their children. A s with all areas of speech pathology, professionals strive to follow evidence-based practice principles when they are working with children with hearing loss and their families. That means that professionals integrate information from research studies with their own knowledge and experience, and input from the children and families with whom they work, to provide the best possible services with the best possible outcomes for children and families (Sackett, Rosenberg, Gray, Haynes, & Richardson, 1996). Understanding how children with hearing loss and their parents communicate, and how parents make decisions about modes of communication, is important for the delivery of evidence-based practice when working with children with hearing loss and their families. Such

an understanding ensures professionals, organisations, and researchers can best support parents as they make decisions about communication mode and use. To date, there has never been an investigation of the communication modes and spoken languages used by a representative group of Australian children with hearing loss and their parents. A series of four studies were undertaken as part of a PhD titled Multilingual children with hearing loss: Communication and choices (Crowe, 2013; Crowe, Fordham, McLeod, & Ching, Crowe, McKinnon, McLeod, & Ching, 2013; Crowe, McLeod, & Ching, 2012; Crowe, McLeod, McKinnon, & Ching, 2012). Research findings from these studies are translated in the current paper for Australian professionals working with children with hearing loss and their families. This information adds to professional knowledge to help clinicians and educators better understand the choices that parents make about how their children with hearing loss will communicate. Previous studies of parent decision-making have looked at small groups of children and parents who have similar demographic characteristics. Children and families participating in the current studies were drawn from a population study of Australian children and have a very broad range of audiological, cultural, linguistic, social, cognitive, educational, and behavioural characteristics. This research is also unique because it asked parents how they and their children communicated, looked at how children communicated at home and in early intervention, and it investigated how children communicated before they began formal schooling. These diverse characteristics, and the large number of families participating in these studies, mean that this research about parents’ decision-making represents many different perspectives. Two questions were examined in order to better understand the communication usage of young Australian children with hearing loss. First, how do children with hearing loss and their parents communicate? That is, which communication modes (speech and/or sign) and languages (language choice and spoken language multilingualism) are used? Second, what are the most important factors that influence parents’ decisions about how their children with hearing loss will communicate? The Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with Hearing Impairment (LOCHI) study Findings outlined in the current paper are primarily based on data from the Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with

KEYWORDS DEAF

HEARING LOSS MULTILINGUAL ORAL SIGN

Kathryn Crowe (top) and Sharynne McLeod

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JCPSLP Volume 16, Number 1 2014

www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au