Northwest Early Childhood Institute - Community Education

National Expert Presentations Past and Present

The Institute has hosted a number of conferences featuring nationally recognized speakers and panels. To view summaries of these presentations and links to related sites, visit: Past Conferences

Community Relations and Education Programs

The Institute provides community outreach and educational services relating to topic areas covered by the Institute to health professionals, distributes printed information to referral sources, develops needed educational materials and schedules speaking engagements in the community for the Institute's clinical staff.

We provide three types of outreach activities:

• Presentations to physicians and health professionals, generally held during lunch, covering such topics as "Speech and Language Milestones - Indicators for Early Referral, " "Language and Literacy," and "Autism Spectrum Disorder," to name a few. In addition, the monthly Clinical Excellence Series is open to all interested professionals

• Presentations to social service agencies, covering services at the Institute. These presentations include handouts with referral sources and names of individuals that can help them better understand the nature of communication disorders, including speech, language and hearing development in children, autism spectrum disorder, and language and literacy as well as hearing loss in adults.

• Public presentations, hearing screenings and classes, offered at a number of sites. For a presentation at your site, please call Community Relations at 503-445-1629 for more information.

PROGRAMS

Community Relations has been evolving in response to the needs of the community. We can provide a number of educational programs such as the following:

Hearing Health Services

Understanding Hearing Loss: 60-90 minutes.
Geared toward the general public. Topics include: basic anatomy and physiology of hearing, psychological and quality of life effects of untreated hearing loss, overview of basic hearing aid devices, and understanding the roles of different professionals in treating hearing loss.

Hearing Aid Technology: 60-90 minutes.
Slightly more advanced than Understanding Hearing Loss, but still geared toward the general public. The two talks work well as a series. More detail on hearing aids than is contained in Understanding Hearing Loss. Issues discussed include: what hearing aids will do and what they will not do, digital hearing aids, directional microphones and background noise reduction, and surgically implanted hearing devices.

Understanding Hearing Loss and Making Referrals: 60 minutes
Geared toward primary care medical professionals. Topics can be abbreviated or left out to shorten to 30 minutes if necessary. Basic anatomy and physiology of hearing, interpreting the audiogram, roles of different healthcare providers, performing in office hearing screening, and knowing when and where to refer on for diagnostic hearing evaluation.

Introduction to Pediatric Hearing Evaluation: approximately 60 minutes
Geared toward pediatricians or pediatric nurse practitioners. Moderately advanced overview of pediatric audiology. Topics covered include Oregon’s universal hearing screening law (what, why, and how effective is it?), test techniques (tympanometry, otoacoustic emissions, auditory brainstem response, and behavioral hearing tests), and the importance of the primary care office in ensuring follow up testing.

Hearing Loss and Employment: 60-90 minutes
Geared toward caseworkers with clients in the workforce. Topics include: basic anatomy and physiology of hearing loss, understanding hearing test results, psychosocial and vocational effects of untreated hearing loss, and an overview of basic hearing aid and assistive device technology used in most workplaces.

Managing Hearing Aids-What the Caregiver Need to Know: 45-60 minutes
Geared toward caregivers of hearing aid users. Topics include: introduction to hearing loss, why hearing aids don’t do it all, reasonable expectations of hearing aid use, communication strategies to improve understanding, how hearing aids work, daily care and maintenance of hearing aids, troubleshooting the hearing aid when things go wrong, and understanding the roles of different healthcare professionals in managing the hearing loss.

Screening and Management of Adult Hearing Loss in Primary Care: 30 minutes
Covers:

Auditory Processing Disorder: 60-90 minutes
Geared toward medical workers, audiologists, and educators with a basic understanding of hearing loss. Talk is moderately advanced. Topics include: what is auditory processing disorder, what to do when the hearing test is normal, but the patient complains of hearing difficulty, tests used in diagnosis, anatomy and physiology of the auditory nervous system, and how it relates to auditory processing disorder, the team based evaluation, and treatment options.

The Aging Auditory System:
Geared toward medical professionals including PCPs, gerontologists, ENTs, audiologists, naturopathic and homeopathic physicians, and nurse practitioners. Talk is 60-90 minutes. Topics include: basic anatomy and physiology of hearing, epidemiology, causes of presbycusis, changes in the central nervous system that affect hearing, why hearing in noise becomes harder, and preventative healthcare strategies (supplements, antioxidants, etc.).

Children's Services

Speech, Language and Hearing

Early Brain Development:
Brain development begins even before birth and is determined by the sensory input a child receives from his/her environment. This presentation covers how the brain learns to learn, critical periods for auditory and language input and the significant role of parents and caregivers in this process. Information on how children learn and suggestions for brain stimulation and promoting communication in the first year of life is included. (can be adapted to 30 - 50 minutes)

Prelinguistic Communication:
Babies communicate from the time of birth and when parents/caregivers interpret and respond appropriately to the infant’s communicative attempts, the process of language acquisition is accelerated. Learn a developmental sequence of prelinguistic communication and how parents/caregivers can promote communication even before words are used. (1 hour)

The Newborn Hearing Screening Process:
The state of Oregon now requires that all infants born in hospitals with more than 200 births per year have their hearing screened. This presentation covers how screening is done, what happens when a baby does not pass the screening process, how hearing loss is diagnosed during the first months of life and how families of infants with hearing loss can get connected with appropriate early intervention. (30 minutes)

Treatment of Infants and Toddlers with Hearing Loss (includes discussion of cochlear implants).
The treatment plan for any baby with hearing loss is based on the infant’s degree of hearing loss and on the parent’s goals for their child. The treatment provided at Infant Hearing Resource is family-centered and geared toward helping the child understand and use spoken language. Participants will learn how families are involved in sessions during which they learn about their child’s hearing loss and how to address the impact it has on their child’s development, how parents learn to manage hearing aid use and when it is advisable to consider the use of a cochlear implant. They learn how family members learn to use daily interactions and activities to promote the child’s acquisition of listening, language and speech skills. (1 – 3 hours)

Child Communication: What is Normal?
Discover the landmarks of normal speech and language and hearing development from birth to six. Understand why speech develops as it does. Learn about language content, form and use and how children make words work. Activities for promoting communication development will be included in the longer session (30 minutes, one or two hours).

Top Ten Tips for Toys and Materials
How to use toys and materials interactively and how to promote communication. This presentation is aimed at parents or caretakers of preschoolers to help them figure out the best ways to play with toys to stimulate language. The presentation discusses activities related to attention, creating repetition, minimizing distractions, etc.

Screening, Evaluation and Identification
Includes how to make a referral, working with families and community resources (20 minutes)

Parent Training

Understanding Your Toddler's Behavior $75/program
This program is a 4 week, 1 _ hr, and discussion format program for parents of children from 1 year to 3 years, provided by David W. Willis, M.D., a Behavioral-Developmental pediatrician. The discussions focus on temperament, the importance of relationships to development, developing healthy patterns of sleep, toilet training, and frustration regulation, childcare experiences and promoting cooperation.

Parenting the Difficult 3-6 Year Old $350/program
This group education program is an 8 week, 1 _ hr discussion and problem-solving experience for 8- 10 families conducted by David W. Willis, Behavioral-Developmental Pediatrician and Denny Charlton, Ph.D., Child Psychologist. The semi-structured, topic focused, discussion format allows adult learning about themselves and their of child’s developmental pattern. The major focus of this program is on relationship building, individual child differences, parent competencies and behavioral problem-solving. Videotaping of parent-child interactions, didactic presentations and group problem-solving will promote family strength and child’s development.

Literacy

Language Disorders and Reading
This presentation will focus on the strong relationship between language development and literacy development. Research consistently demonstrates that the majority of children with developmental language disorders go on to have problems developing literacy skills, potentially resulting in academic failure, poor self-esteem, and limited vocational choices. However, given appropriate intervention, children with language disorders can achieve literacy. Specific warning signs, effective intervention options, how to support literacy development in at-risk children and the importance of early literacy intervention will be highlighted. (30 or 60 minutes.)

Ready to Read: Environmental Supports for Literacy Development
Children with easy, frequent access to literacy-boosting materials will become ready to read more quickly. This presentation will focus on how to choose books and materials, how to arrange a “literacy space”, and how to incorporate literacy into daily activities for children of any age. (30 or 60 minutes).

Literacy in the Early Elementary Years
The first three years of elementary school are critical for literacy development. Children must go from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” in just three short years. This presentation will focus on the many developmental factors that affect literacy development, the key components of any elementary reading program identified by leading researchers, how to detect and address potential reading problems, and what parents and caregivers can do to support literacy development during this critical time. (60 or 90 minutes).

Early Literacy Intervention
For children who are at risk for reading failure, early intervention can make a critical difference. Based on the latest research regarding key components of literacy development and intervention, this presentation will describe all aspects of a small group early literacy intervention program. This program can be adapted to many different settings, and can be implemented by a team of speech-language pathologists, teachers and special education teachers. Planning, assessment, family involvement and specific activities will be addressed within a collaborative framework. (60-120 minutes; appropriate for SLPs or special ed teachers).

Literacy and Preschool Children
Reading readiness begins at birth! Learn how literacy begins for young children, how and why to encourage literacy development, and the importance of prompt identification and intervention for children who may not achieve literacy easily. Specific examples of activities and ideas for incorporating literacy into the daily lives of young children will be presented, along with age- appropriate books and materials. (30, 60 or 90 minutes).

Autism

Red Flags of Autism: approximately 45 minutes
Geared toward primary care medical professionals. Topics can be abbreviated or left out to shorten to 20 minutes if necessary. Basic overview of symptoms of autism, current interventions, roles of different intervention providers, screening tools for assessing autistic symptoms, and knowing when and where to refer on for diagnostic evaluation.

Understanding Autism: 60-90 minutes.
Geared toward the general public. Topics include: symptoms of autism, history of the disorder, and overview of basic autism interventions.

Current Treatments for Autism: 60-90 minutes.
Slightly more advanced than Understanding Autism, but still geared toward the general public. The two talks work well as a series. More detail on interventions than is contained in Understanding Autism. Issues discussed include: theoretical bases of current interventions, information on specific types of interventions (educational, behavioral, and biomedical), and empirically validated interventions (what we know works versus what is controversial).

Advanced Training in Intervention Techniques 60-180 minutes

Each of the above topics can be presented in a 1- or 2-hour training format that is geared to teach professionals working with children with autism (SLPs, OTs, special educators, etc.) how to use specific intervention techniques.

Parent training: 45-60 minutes
This workshop is geared towards professionals working with children with autism. It focuses on the importance of parent training and education, research on its efficacy and how to do it.

Classroom Behavior Management: 60-180 minutes
This workshop teaches preschool and school age teachers and childcare providers how to use behavior management strategies in the classroom to improve student behavior. This topic is especially relevant for teachers working with children with developmental disabilities in inclusive settings.

Contact or call 503-228-6479 if you would like to schedule a presentation for staff or a hearing screening and educational session for your community.