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Auditory Verbal therapy integrates the development of listening and talking into all aspects of the child’s social, emotional, cognitive, and cultural experiences, so that listening becomes an integral part of his or her life (Estabrooks, Morrison, Maclver-Lux, 2020)²⁹.

AVT supports communications strategies through:

Early support, and equitable access to the support, should be available for all deaf children whether their families choose to communicate with spoken language, sign language or both. It is important that professionals support families, as soon as their child’s deafness is identified, to gain the necessary knowledge, information, and experiences to make fully informed decisions; families and professionals work together to ensure optimal, language-rich environments for communication and language learning and development; and professionals provide early skilled and specialist support.

Rosie Gardner has been a Teacher of the Deaf for 30 years, and is based in Northern Ireland.  Rosie completed AVUK’s training package, and became a LSLS Certified Auditory Verbal Therapist. Read Rosie's story.

• Rehabilitation resources by Cochlear
• Information handouts are available from Hearing First
• Medel’s Blog has a range of rehabilitation activity handouts and ideas that focus on listening and spoken language.

Research studies from Auditory Verbal UK have found that children’s rate of language development was significantly accelerated from pre to post programme (Hogan, Stokes, White, Tyszkiewicz, & Woolgar, 2008)²⁰; that financial status of the family per se is not a factor that influences spoken language outcomes for families participating in AV therapy (Hogan, Stokes, & Weller, 2010)²¹; that approximately 80% of children who spend at least 2 years on the programme achieve age appropriate language (Hitchins & Hogan 2018)³; and 1 in 2 children with add

At the Cochlear™ Listening to Learn Conference (2015) Sarah Hogan DPhil LSLS CertAVT discussed the principles of developing listening and spoken language.  You can view her presentation slides here.     

AV therapy is government funded in Australia, New Zealand and Denmark and a mainstream approach in North America.  There are also AV practitioners working in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom (UK) and more.

AG Bell have some family stories available of their website from both a parent perspective and a child perspective.

In order to become a certified AV practitioner you must the meet the requirements set out by the Alexander Graham Bell Academy.  Download the Certification Handbook for further information and eligibility requirements in order to become a Certified Auditory Verbal practitioner.

The ear is the ‘doorway to the brain’ for sound (Cole & Flexer, 2016)¹⁴.  Hearing loss obstructs the ‘doorway’ in various ways and to varying degrees, preventing auditory input from reaching the brain.  The purpose of hearing technology is to get auditory information through the ‘doorway’ to the brain (Flexer & Rhoades, 2016)¹⁵.

Dr Carol Flexer discusses Auditory Brain Development.