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[Date]

Child’s Name - Child Disability Allowance Submission

Dear [Case Manager’s Name],

I am writing this in support of our application for the Child Disability Allowance for [insert child’s name].

As stated in our Audiologist’s Report, [insert child’s name] has a[delete not applicable – mild / moderate / severe / profound] hearing loss and is required to wear hearing aids at all times during the day. Without the use of their hearing aids, our child has a severe risk of not developing speech and language skills on par with children their own age, which would adversely affect communication skills, social and emotional wellbeing, educational development and possibly career opportunities and life chances in the future.

In order to have our child’s hearing aids programmed to cater for their specific hearing loss, we have had numerous appointments at the Audiology Department, [insert local hospital name], and will continue to have these appointments throughout childhood. Appointments have included; testing for a period of hours over years in order to diagnose specific hearing thresholds, hearing aid programming, fitting and training, ongoing creation of hearing aid moulds and subsequent mould fittings and ongoing assessment to confirm speech and language is developing at the correct level for their age.

Having hearing aids correctly moulded and fitted is just the beginning of assisting them with their hearing. Every day a parent is required to do the following; check that the hearing aid batteries are working and are inserted correctly into each hearing aid, put the hearing aids on each ear [delete following line if not applicable) (and off when asleep and back on throughout the day as required], ensure the hearing aids do not get wet during play or bath time, test for feedback noise, the cutting of moulds to replace older ones and fitting these to their hearing aids, ordering of batteries, hearing aid cleaning and general maintenance and continue to monitor the hearing aids are on and have not loosened or fallen off or been lost.

[delete following sentence if not applicable - Our child is at an age where they can pull their hearing aids off, therefore close supervision is required to ensure their hearing aids and batteries are not accessed and/or mistakenly ingested.]

On top of the hearing aid fitting and wearing, greater care needs to be taken to ensure our child is learning and developing their speech at the correct rate. [delete not applicable - This involves ongoing vocalizing of various sounds and language with them to ensure they are hearing properly and are exposed to all they can. Our child cannot ‘overhear’ language like hearing children, so require us to talk directly to them at close range in order to access spoken communication. Because their hearing system doesn’t work properly, even with hearing aids, they need to hear more language, more of the time, than children with intact hearing systems. This requires us to spend more time communicating with our deaf/hearing impaired child than we would with a hearing child. Or. This involves speech therapy at[insert speech therapist’s name].

[Include the following paragraph if your child is UNDER 5 years of age]

It is proven to be imperative that all sounds within our language are heard from birth in order to learn to vocalize speech correctly. The government has set up a national Newborn Hearing Screening Programme in order to screen children and treat them in their infancy for this very reason. On the programme’s website it states in the Getting Started pamphlet there is funding available through the form of the Child Disability Allowance for children with impaired hearing. This is also stated on several other New Zealand hearing impaired websites as well as material written by the Ministry of the Health, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Social Development.

Aside from an Audiologist, our child has also been assigned an Advisor ('Advisor on Deaf Children') by the Ministry of Education. The role of this advisor is to support them and our family at home with hearing impairment issues as they arise, [delete if not applicable - sign language] and with learning and development, as well as with early education and schooling. This support has already started, to ensure as early as possible our child is set up to achieve.

It is because of [insert child’s name] ongoing need for hospital appointments, coupled with the ongoing day-to-day management of their hearing aids and continued support for language and speech development that they exceed the level of care a “normal” child of similar age would require.

Their Audiologist and General Practitioner have supported this view as acknowledged in our application.

I look forward to hearing your response regarding our submission.

Warm regards,

[Your Name]

Private and confidentialHA Version 1.0 September 2016Page 1