Page 48 - 2022 May Report

May Report 2022
Weingarten Children’s Center report (3)
children so we moved back to the same room where we were welcomed in the morning.
They had prepared a very good hand out which was like copies of slides for a Power Point presentation and Meg’s presentation followed that. She was very excited about both programs and described the current status and the plans for the future. They estimate that 90% or more young deaf children do not receive language instruction or related services and she made reference to the “synaptic pruning” which showsthatthecriticalageforlanguageacquisitionis2-3yearsanddropsoffrapidlyafterthat. Thispoint was made during the presentation made to the Grant Program Committee at the March 2021 meeting and pretty much everyone agrees that there is a critical period for language acquisition. WCC’s goal is to reach as many young deaf children as possible. They estimate that BabyTalk will be able to reach as many as 100 students quickly and that Talk2Me’s reach is virtually unlimited.
BabyTalk is a successful teleintervention and the plan is to expand it. They have had a ten year partnership with Stanford School of Medicine and the program is grant funded. They are currently serving 69 families. Interestingly, in their application to the
Foundation in March, 2021, their goal for the
first year was to expand to 65 families.
For Talk2Me, the goal for the first year was to build the first 55 lessons. They currently have finished 23 but expect to have 103 finished very soon. Their goal is to work with individual county speech pathologists. Each county has a number of speech pathologists (CSP) and when a baby is born and screening shows a significant hearing loss, the CSP is assigned to work with the baby and the family.
There are 58 counties in California, some of
which are very wealthy and some of which
are impoverished. Meg talked about one
county, Kern County, which is very large
geographically and has just one CSP. While
that CSP very much wants to serve all
the identified children, the long distances
between homes makes it almost impossible
to do so. Talk2Me will prepare video
instruction products that CSPs and parents can use on their own. This should make it possible for even a large, underfunded county like Kern to begin listening and speaking instruction during that critical period.
They are carefully developing each new lesson and testing it on a number of teachers and parents to be sure that each module is ready before it is rolled out. All the staff present showed real enthusiasm about both Talk2Me and BabyTalk.
Sara talked about funding and about how there is a widespread belief that Silicon Valley is rich and that philanthropy is easy to come by. She said this is not true. That the major donors from Silicon Valley are individuals who have specific interests and connections.
The numbers they presented are very large. They estimate that there are currently 3,413 deaf children ages0-3inCaliforniaandabout24,000intheUnitedStates. TheybelievethatonceTalk2Melessonsare complete, it should be possible to scale the program nationally.
It was a very good visit and the WCC staff all look forward to having the full JSF Board visit in September.
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