Leah was diagnosed with bilateral severe sensorineural hearing loss and was just under 10 months old when her family began the tVISIT Program with Clarke in March 2020. A Clarke speech-language pathologist, Molly Schoenfeld, MS, CCC-SLP, TSSLD, led the virtual sessions and welcomed Leah and her mother, Kim, who joined from Watertown, NY.

“The area we live in has very limited resources when it comes to hearing loss in children,” explained Kim. “We would’ve had to drive our daughter an hour and 20 minutes to receive specialized services related to her hearing loss. Our Clarke speech-language pathologist is absolutely wonderful and has been nothing short of a blessing to our family. Working with Clarke has drastically improved my confidence in understanding hearing loss as well as how to help Leah.”

Molly adds that Leah’s tremendous progress is partially due to mom Kim’s willingness to learn, participate and carry over strategies they discuss and practice during the virtual sessions. “Working with Kim and Leah has been a true highlight of my time at Clarke,” reports Molly. “We’ve talked about how fun it would be to have in-person time together, but I’m really grateful that tVISITs have allowed us to support Leah’s listening and spoken language development from 300+ miles apart!”

Kim reports that Leah has progressed from barely tolerating her hearing aids and not responding to sounds much at all, to wearing her hearing aids almost all day without issue. “Leah now attempts to imitate speech patterns and pitch during vocalizations, converses back and forth with us and vocalizes to make requests or protests. We are so very proud of her.”

The family has come a long way since enrolling in Clarke’s tVISIT Program. Kim adds, “I truly feel it is helping Leah’s language and development so much and will only continue to do so!”

To learn more about Clarke’s teleservices, visit clarkeschools.org/teleservices