It came as a complete shock to us when we were told at her newborn hearing screening test that Abi had bilateral sensorineural hearing loss and would need to wear hearing aids for life.
This hasn't stopped our wonderful daughter as she had grown up to be a bright, caring, friendly girl who works really hard at school who is always ready to cheer you up with a joke or a song. However, because of her bilateral hearing loss, she has to concentrate extremely hard and always be within six feet and in direct view of her teacher to be able to hear what is going on. This can be exhausting and we have been told by her teachers that this is likely to get harder now that she is moving into key stage 2 where things get more complicated. Her teachers agree that she would greatly benefit from having a soundfield installed in the classroom but there is no funding available. Raising the money to buy one for her means that it would go with her throughout her classroom based education and, as a bonus, help improve the sound quality for her classmates too!