At The Shepherd Centre our vision is to enable children who are deaf and hearing-impaired to develop spoken language, literacy and social skills so they may fully participate in the hearing world, and in so doing reach their full potential. We work mainly with children aged 0 to 5 (their formative years of speech and language development), as well as older children throughout their schooling years. We assist them through the use of our world-leading family-centred interdisciplinary intervention program, including an integrated hearing implant program. The Shepherd Centre helps approximately 700 children and families each year from our seven specialist centres. We also help families from rural and remote areas of Australia, and various overseas countries, via our telehealth program. The Shepherd Centre helps approximately 500 families each year from our five centres in both NSW and ACT. We also help families from rural and remote areas of Australia, Tasmania, and various overseas countries via our residential workshop program and teleintervention program. We aim to see 90% of our children graduate into mainstream school, ensuring that they can complete their education and participate fully in the hearing world along with everyone else. We are so confident in our system and the results. In fact, research has found that the typical language of 5-year-olds graduating from The Shepherd Centre Early Intervention program was better than that of normal-hearing 5-year-olds. This is in children whose first language is English and who have no additional needs. We are constantly looking to connect with businesses and people who can support The Shepherd Centre and help us carry out the work we are so passionate about. If you would like to get involved, please feel free to connect with us, visit our website, or drop us an email to get the conversation started. We look forward to connecting with more like-minded people.
