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The management and care of babies and young children with hearing loss, is an emerging field in India. Shefali Shah’s vision is to offer this generation of babies born with hearing loss across India, the gift of listening and talking like other children their age. As Founder-Director of Sound Steps, an early intervention centre for families of children with hearing loss in Mumbai, Shefali shares the best of modern technology and Auditory-Verbal Therapy, in an individualised service offered to families from across India and overseas.
Shefali Shah is an LSLS Cert. AVT professional, mentored by the world renowned Warren Estabrooks who continues to be her professional guide and her mission is to share excellent practice with families and professional alike.
It is critical that your baby or young child’s hearing is tested without delay if you suspect hearing difficulty. Children with any kind of hearing difficulty, who receive specialised care as close to birth as possible, have the best chance of growing up like other children their age. Waiting only delays this development, sometimes permanently. This is because hearing loss is about the brain.
Managing hearing loss is about making sound and spoken language sufficiently intelligible to the baby or young child’s brain, as close to birth as possible. This early intervention and appropriate stimulation facilitates the growth of auditory networks within the baby’s brain, just as in babies and young children of the same age. Global Ambassador for Hearing and the world’s one time fastest bowler, Brett Lee, has committed himself to spreading this message.
Sound Steps is a centre that specialises in guiding and coaching families who have chosen to nurture their baby or young child with hearing loss to listen, learn and talk, via Auditory-Verbal Therapy. Sound Steps understands that children learn through play. Sessions in Auditory-Verbal Therapy are woven through play, singing, talking and reading.The toy library at Sound Steps equipped with a range of books, toys, games and therapy materials allows families to have fun and to continue to stimulate their child with hearing loss, within the warmth of their homes.
Families travel to Sound Steps in Mumbai, from rural Maharashtra, urban cities such as Calcutta and Chennai and from overseas, to avail of direct and distance services. Annual evaluations using international standardised assessments, provide families with the insights they need to measure the readiness of their child to learn in the mainstream and participate in their communities. The Sound Steps Family, watches proudly on, as their children having graduated from the Sound Steps’ service, go on to play the lead role in school concerts, act in television serials and represent their schools in Spelling Bee competitions.
At Sound Steps we remain committed to guiding your family to help your child with hearing loss achieve his or her highest potential.
How we hear
Measure hearing loss in each ear (Unaided audiogram)
Prescribe and fit appropriate hearing aids
Understand your child's hearing loss
Observe and understand your child's responses
Begin Auditory-Verabl Therapy
Observe and understand your child's responses to spoken language
Instil a listening attitude by providing consistent follow-up
Obtain an Aided audiogram for each ear
Evaluate candidacy for cochlear implantation as needed
Understand your child's hearing devices (hearing aids and/or cochlear implant/s)
Device activation and on-going MAPping (for cochlear-implanted children)
Re-orient your child to listen via his or her cochlear implant in therapy
Build on child's listening skills in therapy
Speech Perception Testing
Track your child's progress
Build on your child's language, thinking, speech and communication skills in therapy
Cross-reference your child's development in therapy with Speech Perception Testing in audiology
Administer a battery of formal, standardised assessments
Demonstrate that age-appropriate development in your child is established
Re-affirm your family's confidence to sustain your child's on- going developemnt
Discharge from Auditory-Verbal Therapy
Monitor in audiology for life (annual appointments, unless otherwise indicated)
