INSIDE LIFE TODAY
Two NI families on how speech therapy service is vital for their children
Fionn Doody (6), from Saintfield, who is profoundly deaf, is the youngest of three, having an older brother Odhran (9) and sister Ciara (7).
His mum Jo (42) is an Open University tutor in sociology and criminology, and his father Donnacha (46) is a scientific officer with the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute.
His parents believe Fionn has been deaf since birth although he wasn’t diagnosed until he was 14 months old. He was fitted with hearing aids in November 2013 and the following July was given cochlear implants which have given him some hearing.
Jo says: “The implants are just phenomenal; he wouldn’t have been able to hear anything without them.
“With the hearing aids he was just getting vibration. After the implants we noticed he was becoming more engaged.
“The whole process of learning to listen and speak did take a long time as his brain had to process all the new sounds like the door bell ringing, mummy speaking or even the microwave going.
“That’s where the speech and language therapy came in.
“The therapist has been fantastic and has given me home- work to do at home and help teach him how to say different words and help him to communicate.”
Fionn is a pupil of Millennium Integrated Primary School in Ballynahinch where he has a fulltime classroom assistant who works closely with the speech and language therapist, helping him to improve his listening and communication skills.
To Jo, learning to speak has transformed the quality of her son’s life.
She says: “It has allowed him to be in mainstream school and if you met him he could have a conversation with you.
“It has really allowed Fionn to interact with his friends and that has made a huge difference to his confidence which has just soared because suddenly people can understand him now. I think early intervention is so critical in these cases.
“It was a long and extremely difficult process getting him diagnosed and I think the sooner you go through it, the better the outcome will be.
“Fionn had two years of silence and although he doesn’t hear the way you and I would hear, and he has to concentrate really hard, the fact that he can is wonderful.
“The speech and language therapist has given him a voice and shown me how to help him at home.
“He has a wonderful relationship with his speech and language therapist because she spent a lot of time building that up and we just feel really lucky that he has her.”