Over Ten Programs Visited in Mumbai and Pune
March, 2006

When we think of India, we think of its large population, technology experts, call centers, and hot temperatures.  Through the dense smog and pollution, India is blossoming in many ways.  A visit in March of 2006 to Pune and Mumbai proved all this to be amazingly accurate.  Traveling with me was Uma Gokhale Soman, a teacher of the deaf, born and raised in Pune, and who works for the National Center for Childhood Deafness and Family Communication at Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center in Nashville, Tennesee.  Her goals as a teacher and partner were exemplified by her professionalism and positive attitude that every child with deafness can succeed.

I was not there to tour or take adventures.  I was there to meet with parents of deaf and hard of hearing children, to visit programs and services for the deaf, and to learn as much as I could about what was available, and what was not available to children with hearing loss and their parents.  I listened with empathy. “I am visiting you to listen to what you have to say, not tell you what to do, and to broaden your perspective as you raise your children.” My hope was that Partners for A Greater Voice identified the strengths of parents and professionals and encouraged the use of these strengths to foster social, emotional and educational support for both parent and child.  Below are some notes on our visit with over ten programs.

First Stop, Mumbai:

Our first stop was Mumbai where we visited three programs: Aured, Naad Early Intervention Center of the I Hear Foundation and Central School for the Deaf.  We met Vahishtai Daboo, a paretn of  achild who is deaf. We visited the program she now works for as a teacher of the hearing impaired called Aured. Aured provides services to approximately 60 families – children who use hearing aids and cochlear implants and chose Auditory Verbal therapy. Vahishtai asked me to conduct a parent workshop regarding the social emotional stages parent encounter. About 55 parents participated in this three-hour workshop. The parents were very interested in the information and more than a few were affected emotionally by my message. There was a feeling and realization of the importance of coming together as a parent group.  Parents wanted to meet again, and wanted workshops specific to several topics we touched upon.  Naad is an early intervention center that currently caters to 22 families from Mumbai, neighboring cities and various states in India. All the children that receive services at Naad are 0-5 years old. The mission of this center is to provide early intervention and parent training in order to successfully mainstream the children by Kindergarten or first grade. Naad launched their newborn hearing screening program in November 2005. Naad’s director Shefali Shah is a graduate of the Smith College-Clarke School program; and the senior audiologist Geeti Char has graduated from East Tennessee University in Johnson City, TN. The Naad center provides the following services in their facility – audiological services (newborn hearing screening, audiometric testing, hearing aid trials, implant mapping, equipment troubleshooting, etc.) speech and language therapy and parent counseling.  They are doing a fantastic job, but they also desire more auditory-verbal/oral training. Central School for the Deaf is one of the oldest auditory-oral schools in India.  It has some state and government funding and the school has some fund raising activities as well. Every child irrespective of his/her economic status and degree of hearing loss is admitted to the school. The mission of this school is to give every child the opportunity to learn to talk and to become fully mainstreamed in society. The school once had a teacher-training program (it was closed 2 years ago). Uma was trained in this program, and it was shock for her to hear that one of the finest teacher training programs in the country was shut down.

As we talked with various professionals in Mumbai over a 3-day period there were a few things that were common. They all talked about the lack of training for new professionals in the field and lack of networking and exchange of information amongst the various programs.  Some professionals had gone to Australia for training in post implant habilitation and had participated in training workshops.  However, they desired more in-country workshops and training.

Visiting Pune:

Uma was born and raised in Pune.  Because of her sister’s deafness and the success her mother had in developing her sister’s oral language, Uma was driven to become a teacher of the deaf like her mother.  She acquired a degree at Central School for the Deaf and then moved to United States to obtain her Masters in Education of the Deaf (MED) at Smith College. Uma and her mother intimately understand deafness and know the programs and resources within their community of Pune, a population of over 1 million. We had a fabulous time visiting over 6 programs, including several parent meetings.

We first met with two different groups of parents.  Our conversation with a younger group of families revolved around social and emotional development, while we chatted about technology and transitioning to college for the older group of teens and parents.  It’s important to note that we allowed parents to lead us down a path of conversation. Parents understood their child’s hearing loss and were ready to accept the challenge and do everything they could to make sure that their child would be successful in the mainstream.  A workshop on social emotional stages ended up being more of a discussion than a lecture.  Parents willingly shared their stories and the emotions they experienced on this journey.   We responded accordingly. It was evident that these parents trusted and believed in oral language development, since they saw the results of their hard work and their child’s spoken language.

Programs in Pune offered audiological and hearing health care, newborn hearing screening initiatives, therapy and mainstream programs.   When we visited a mainstream program, we met two teachers of the deaf who provided support to approximately 15 students in K though 10 grade. They mentioned that these families were actively involved in the students’ education.  The teachers also said that they did not really work with the regular education teachers because not all teachers were receptive to taking their suggestions/advice.  We visited some classrooms.  Each classroom had about 50-60 students, bare floors, open windows, and terrible acoustics. A student who had hearing loss was always seated in the front row and typically had a buddy. We noticed that all students who had hearing loss wore pink uniforms (blouses), while all the other students wore blue uniforms. When asked about this the teacher of the deaf mentioned that the principals required this, and the students did not mind this a bit and were very well adjusted.  We found this hard to believe.

We also visited another mainstream school. Snehal Lagu, a trained teacher of the deaf, provides support to approximately 25 students with special needs, 8 of them have a hearing loss.  We realized that she did not have much support (technology and related information) she needed to do her job effectively. She was not familiar with auditory development strategies for learning to listen and speak, FM systems, cochlear implant technology, nor did she do listening checks. This is not a comment on her dedication and her willingness to learn or to teach.  She is a fabulous teacher! This is a comment about the lack of training and support for professionals working with the deaf in India.  She was open with us about her loneliness because she had no network of teaching support.

We visited the leading facility in Pune for cochlear implant surgery and habilitation, called Pune Advanced Auditory Research Private Limited.  Dr. Dabke currently supports 30 implanted children and has 3 therapists that work closely with the families.  His program provides therapy to 8 students with hearing aids. Cochlear Australia has supported this center by providing training and workshops. This center and the professionals associated with it are working towards raising the awareness regarding early intervention, cochlear implants, newborn hearing screening etc. They appear to be very supportive of families and their needs. This center inaugurated its newborn hearing screening program on March 18th, 2006.  We also toured the audiology facility with Dr. Mandake.

Surhud Mandal’s School for the Deaf and Dumb. Like the Central School for the Deaf, this school receives some funding from the state and federal government. Every child is admitted to the school irrespective of the economic status and degree of hearing loss. This school has 4 satellite programs in the suburbs and neighboring rural communities. The school also runs a teacher training program. We met with the teachers and learned about their school. Uma and I talked about the stages of auditory development and how in spite of inadequate amplification, one could teach the kids to be strong listeners while relying on speech reading. We then toured the school and observed several classes.  Most of the students had body worn hearing aids that were put on at the beginning of the day and taken off at the end of the day.  It was evident that most of these teachers relied on speech reading and used finger spelling or sign language. Some classrooms had “group hearing aid” systems. We also observed a speech therapy session. The therapist was working on some articulation goals and was having a hard time getting the child to produce the desired consonant. The therapist has some good strategies to correct the child’s speech but the lack of training was evident.  Uma took a few modest moments to work with this child and gave a fabulous demonstration. We visited their vocational training program and looked at the jewelry, pictures, cards and other goods that the students had made and sold for profit. Our overall impression was that all of these professionals were very dedicated and wanted the best for their students. They were doing all they could with the technology and the training they had. What they needed was better technology and training.

Visiting India was a great experience and my personal emmersion in the culture (Holi and fabric shopping a highlight) was tremendous.  As a result of our mission trip, we mailed educational materials, textbooks, and FM technology.  We also consulted Vahistai on how to start a parent network, which today is called V-Connect. Our relationship has since flourished.