hearing loss and the criminal justice system - Australian Indigenous ...

Senate Inquiry March 2010_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________When programs have been developed, notably for Indigenous students, they have had ahealth rather than an educational focus and have promoted approaches modelled onservices for the smaller number of children with Sensori‐neural Hearing Loss. (That is, theyhave promoted amplification and individual support around language focussed teachingstrategies) It is my experience that the scale of the problem, and the different needs ofIndigenous children with Conductive Hearing Loss, means that programs based on a SpecialEducation model of service delivery have often had limited success.The manner in which educational special needs areidentified also serves to disadvantage children withlearning and behavioural issues that are related toConductive Hearing Loss. Children with schoollearning or behavioural difficulties are usuallyreferred for psycho‐educational assessment, which iscarried out one‐to‐one in quiet surroundings. Theresults of this testing determines the ability of thechild to access resources. Given the important rolethat background noise plays for children with theseThe manner in which educationalspecial needs are identified alsoserves to disadvantage childrenwith learning and behaviouralissues that are related toConductive Hearing Loss.types of listening difficulties and the prevalence of background noise in the classroomcontext, the results of tests that were conducted in a quiet environment, may often havepoor ecological validity ‐ they do not fully reflect the difficulties experienced by children inthe classroom.The learning and social capacity of a child with listening difficulties, as evidenced duringone‐on‐one testing in a quiet environment, are likely to be significantly different to thatdemonstrated by the same child when in a noisy, crowded classroom. The result of thefocus on out‐of‐class assessment to determine ‘educational need’, is that children withlistening problems will have their needs consistently underestimated. Consequently, theyare also disadvantaged when special educational resources are allocated. This creates asituation where special education resource allocation unintentionally discriminates againstchildren with listening problems. The children who are the victims of this ‘discrimination’are usually from disadvantaged and Indigenous backgrounds.… educational discrimination experienced by Indigenous students with ConductiveHearing Loss are multi-staged … a chain of neglect …The origins of educational discrimination experienced by Indigenous students withConductive Hearing Loss are multi‐staged. The end point of Indigenous children withConductive Hearing Loss being poorly supported is derived from a chain of neglect thatincludes: Classroom teachers having almost no training in the educational issues aroundIndigenous Conductive Hearing Loss; There being few Indigenous educators or tutors available to support Indigenouschildren with Conductive Hearing Loss;_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________42 Phoenix Consulting