[Report 1956] / School Medical Officer of Health, Reading County Borough.

  • Reading (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1956
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1956] / School Medical Officer of Health, Reading County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    is designed to measure ability not just to hear but to discriminate sound. Even with partially deaf children with up to 90 d.b. hearing loss it has been found possible to teach discrimination of speech to a 100% level of efficiency, although the intensity needed in these cases may be 115 d.b. or more. Aural work consists of both individual and group training and ranges from discrimination between grossly different sounds to listening to tape recorded stories complete with sound effects. These stories have as their subject matter a wide range of history, geography, nature-study or scripture material; indeed, anything of educational or cultural interest including simple music. As the aural training takes effect, lipreading, still an important skill, becomes easier because more clues on the context are available through the ear. Speech takes on a natural quality and is easier to correct and improve. Some twenty or so hours every week are given over to such hearing training, but individual transistor aids are worn at all other times. Future Needs. It is felt that a child rehabilitated both in attainments and in communication skill stands a good chance of maintaining progress throughout and beyond his school life but a close follow-up of all children from the unit placed in normal schools is necessary so that we may be sure. The opinion that deaf children learn to communicate more easily if taught from an early age is now widely held. An approach to organised work with pre-school children is therefore being explored, and we hope to form another unit—for younger children—within the coming year. Survey of Children with Defective Hearing attending Normal Schools, by Daniel Ling. (I have pleasure in giving an acknowledgment that this work is Mr. Ling’s own original work.—E. Hughes, P.S.M.O.) The work reported in this paper forms part of, and will be discussed more fully in, a thesis to be presented to the Cambridge University Institute of Education in satisfaction of the requirements for its Research Associateship. The number of children with known hearing defect attending normal schools in Reading during the Autumn term of 1956 was 42. The severity of deafness among these children extended from less than 15 decibels to more than 60 decibels. A survey of all children in this group was designed and included assessments of hearing, speech, educational attainments, mental ability and social background. Some medical data was also recorded. Purpose.—The purpose of this survey was to acquire sufficient information :— {a) To evaluate present medical and educational provision ; (b) To determine the immediate needs of individual children ; and (c) To formulate a future general policy in the light of the findings. Procedure.—Names of children concerned were obtained from the records of the School Health Service, the E.N.T. Department of the Royal Berkshire Hospital and from the head teachers of all schools. The clinic, which was held in the unit for partially deaf children, occupied two afternoons each week. On the average, only two cases were seen during each session. The children attended with their parents who were invited by letter. Duplicates of these letters were sent to respective headteachers for information. Attached to each duplicate was a request for the teacher’s rating of each child. Details and an analj^sis of results are given below. Three people were involved in the work of the clinic. Dr. G. O’Donnell admin¬ istered intelligence tests and noted various medical data. Miss Ann C. Randle rated each child’s speech and shared all other testing with the writer. The Tests. (1) Hearing.—This was tested both by pure tone and speech audiometry. In the pure tone testing standard techniques were used. Testing was carried out on a Maico audiometer recently calibrated by Amplivox Ltd. to the