The World Health Assembly adopted a 2017 resolution recognising hearing loss as a priority worldwide health issue. Children with hearing loss present significant risks for language acquisition, educational achievement, socio-emotional development, and well-being. Intervention plans failed to prepare those children for academic achievement and social participation in contemporary society where the diversity of their needs is increasing. Comm4CHILD is a consortium that implemented an innovative approach for optimising the communicative skills and social inclusion of children with hearing loss. Comm4CHILD addressed the large inter-individual heterogeneity in brain plasticity, cognitive resources, and linguistic abilities, and took full advantage of this heterogeneity to support efficient communicative skills in children with hearing loss. A group of 15 ESRs were trained in research and intervention in a cross-sectoral way. The work of the ESRs (1) enhanced mapping of the factors underlying heterogeneity, (2) advanced the understanding of the predictors of linguistic communicative skills, and (3) developed new intervention methods. The output of this unique consortium has an impact across all aspects of everyday life of children with hearing loss. Specifically, Comm4CHILD provides a significantly improved understanding of communicative and social skills that will underpin the development of innovative future treatment and rehabilitation measures.
The findings have been made accessible to a wide variety of stakeholders, such as children with hearing impairment (HI) and their families, deaf organisations and charities, practitioners, professional organisations, as well as to an international audience, in multiple languages through publications by ESRs, Posters and talks in scientific meetings, organisatons of events, publications of newsletters, factsheets, … Moreover, news softwares and clinical guidances and new protocols have been released.
