Serving Severely Emotionally Disturbed Deaf Youth - Alabama ...

Statewide Deaf Children’s Services Page 25require close cooperation between the school staff and the program staff.Program staff would need to be on-call to assist in intervening whenstudents are having difficulty. Regular therapy would be provided eitherby project clinicians or the school counselor as determined by thetreatment team.Other children will be more appropriately served in a therapeutic fosterhome. For a state the size of Alabama, up to ten therapeutic foster homeswould be needed to serve the deaf or hard of hearing children. Thesehomes would replicate the pilot project done in Missouri in the late 1990’s(Hamerdinger & Murphy, 2000). Foster parents must be able tocommunicate effectively in American Sign Language. There would beadditional therapeutic benefit if the foster parents were deaf themselves,although this would not be an exclusionary criteria. Support for the fosterparents would be provided by the case managers and the project staff.Ultimately, the program would seek to assist the child’s family in providinga better environment. The focus would be providing in-home assistance inthe tradition of wrap-around in-home supports. These supports wouldinclude communication skills training, training in behavior managementtechniques