Let’s Listen and Talk is provided by The Elizabeth Foundation, a registered charity for preschool deaf children based in the UK. We have over 40 years of experience supporting deaf babies and young children and their families from our main family centre in Portsmouth, Hampshire and through our distance learning courses.
Our approach
We have developed our own unique Multi Sensory Oral Approach to support children with all degrees of deafness in developing their listening and spoken language skills. This approach encourages them in developing their speech, language and listening by using all of their senses, in a natural and fun way.
Our impact
In this video, you can listen to the experiences of the mother whose son attended The Elizabeth Foundation’s preschool nursery in Portsmouth since he was diagnosed as a baby.
She talks about the approach we use at The Elizabeth Foundation and why she thinks her son and their family have benefited from it.
Our services
At our family centre in Hampshire, we provide specialist baby, toddler and preschool nursery services for young deaf children before they start school. At any one time we have at least 50 families registered to attend our baby, toddler and preschool nurseries five days a week, three academic terms a year.
From our family centre, we also ran a successful, print-based home learning correspondence course for families caring for deaf babies and preschool children. Following its launch in 1986, this home learning programme helped many hundreds of children and their families across the UK and around the world. Let’s Listen and Talk has now replaced this print-based support service.
We have used both our experience in delivering the nursery services at our family centre and in providing the print-based home learning programme when developing our Let’s Listen and Talk Baby, Toddler and Preschool programmes.
Our expertise
Our expert team includes Teachers of the Deaf and Specialist Speech and Language Therapists. We also have access to the expertise of other specialists including audiologists, educational psychologists, sensory support teams and social workers.
Our course leaders
More importantly, we have the shared experience of the thousands of families that we have talked with and helped over the last 40 years. When you enrol onto one of the Let’s Listen and Talk programmes we will assign you with a course leader who will support you every step of the way. Find out more about our course leaders.
What families say about us
We welcome families with deaf babies and children with open arms. Here is what families have to say about us:
“The staff team are amazing. We enjoyed everything about the programme – loved the classes and learned so much.”
“It helps having staff that have deaf children themselves. They completely understand the situation we are in.”
“I always feel a sense of belonging – somebody always being there for you. It is such a special place.”
“The support has been invaluable and the most beneficial service we have received/accessed to help and guide us to deal with my son’s hearing loss.”
“Finding out about The Elizabeth Foundation has changed our lives for the best.”
“Thank you for all you do – your kindness, support and care mean so much to me.”
“The Elizabeth Foundation has helped our family to understand a world that was new to us. We now have a skill-set suited to teaching our daughter and helping her to progress.”
“Without the support of The Elizabeth Foundation I would have really struggled emotionally and practically to support my daughter. The help we have received enables me to continue supporting her at home.”
“There are great ideas for each parent. One can select games, enrich one’s ideas and use a variety of games with your child. I find the lessons and reporting very helpful indeed.”
Enabling access – wherever you live
Our Let’s Listen and Talk programme is for the many families who would like to access The Elizabeth Foundation’s unique expertise but are not able to attend our family centre in person.
The programme is based on over four decades of experience of providing support to deaf babies, toddlers and preschool children and their families. It draws directly from the techniques our Teachers of the Deaf use in our classrooms and our experience in providing distance learning courses. Read more about the key features of the programme.
Find out more about us
To find out more about us, visit The Elizabeth Foundation website.