Parkfields hosts the middle school Hearing Inclusion Provision for Central Bedfordshire. This is one of the three provisions in the county which support Deaf children from nursery to Year 13. The others are based at Toddington St George and Harlington Upper School.

Our children

We believe that a Deaf person “can do anything a hearing person can do, except hear”, and the HIP children are fully immersed in the life of the school both academically but also in extra-curricular activities and on trips.  Children from the provision are in sports teams, in choir and other clubs. They help run the school radio, act as Arts Leaders and as Ambassadors, to name just a few things!

 

Our team

The HIP team is made up of a Senior Teacher of the Deaf who oversees all three provisions but is based at Parkfields and a team of very experienced and knowledgeable educational communicators. We also have a highly specialist speech and language therapist who visits weekly and an educational audiologist who is on hand when needed!

We also work with outside agencies such as hospital audiology departments, CI centres and DeafCAMHS.

 

Support

The children have 1:1 support from educational communicators in all mainstream lessons and they receive additional lessons with our Teacher of the Deaf. They receive additional help with anything from language and vocabulary to emotional literacy and pre and post teaching to support mainstream lessons. We also support children in unstructured times and in clubs if this will be beneficial – though most of our children are quite happy to be independent during these times, knowing we are in the HIP if needed!

 

Communication

We have a ‘total communication’ approach, so we support children in the communication method of their choice whether that is BSL, SSE, spoken English or a combination of all three. We also provide teaching in BSL both to the Deaf children and to their hearing peers. We are very proud that two of our children achieved BSL level 1 this year.

 

Deaf Awareness

All staff receive regular Deaf awareness training both as part of induction and as regular refreshers as part of whole school training. We think it is very important that all members of our school community are Deaf aware.  As a school we celebrate BSL Week and Deaf Awareness Week every year – this year we held a mass BSL ‘Fingerspellathon’ and the children created their own ‘Deaf aware’ PowerPoint which was shared across the school.

 

Deaf Community

The children in the provision benefit from having a ‘Deaf community’ – going to school with peers who share their experiences. We have weekly HIP assemblies to bring the children together and look at Deaf history and culture and to celebrate the experiences of other Deaf people. We also love to go on trips whenever we can, including among other things, going to Chickenshed Theatre’s signed and captioned performances and Bedford Borough’s inclusive sports events.

 

Technology

In the provision, we support children with their individual technology – hearing aids, cochlear implant processors and radio aids.  We also have a Soundfield system across the school which enhances the listening conditions for all the children.  The HIP children are assisted to make best use of the technology available to them.