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Chairs
Ann Parker, Senior Teaching Fellow, UCL
Dr Chris Donlan, Deputy Head, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences (PaLS), UCL
Panel Members
Professor Bencie Woll, Chair in Sign Language and Deaf Studies, Director of DCAL - Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, UCL
Dr Rachel Rees, Lecturer, Developmental Science Research Department, PaLS, UCL
Professor Gary Morgan, Psychology, City University and Deputy Director, DCAL
Dr Andrew Faulkner, Head of Research Department of Speech Hearing and Phonetic Sciences (SHaPS), PaLS, UCL
Presenters
Judy Halden, Specialist Speech and Language Therapist with Deaf People, Teacher of the Deaf, Honorary Research Associate, UCL
Julia Divers, Teacher of the Deaf, Honorary Research Associate, UCL
Mary Kean, Communications and Stakeholder Lead for NHS Newborn Hearing Screening
Professor Bencie Woll, Chair in Sign Language and Deaf Studies, DCAL, UCL
Dr Rachel Rees, Lecturer, Developmental Science Research Department, PaLS, UCL
Dr Merle Mahon, Senior Lecturer, Developmental Science Research Department, PaLS, UCL
Dr Andrew Faulkner, Head of Research Department of Speech Hearing and Phonetic Sciences (SHaPS), PaLS, UCL
Gwen Carr, Honorary Senior Research Associate, UCL, Education Consultant to the England Newborn Hearing Screening team
Further Information
Gwen Carr
Gwen is Deputy Director of the England NHS Newborn Hearing Screening Programme and Hon. Senior Research Associate at the University College London Ear Institute.
Gwen’s early career was as a qualified teacher of the deaf specialising in the development of language and communication and in working with very young deaf children and their families. She spent 10 years as Head of Sensory Support Services in a Metropolitan Authority during which time she was responsible for partnership working with the Health Authority and worked jointly in clinical settings in Paediatric Audiology and ENT. She then spent 4 years as Director of UK Services for the National Deaf Children’s Society before joining the NHS in 2006.
As a consultant to the Government’s ‘Early Support’ programme in England, Gwen contributed to the production of materials for both professionals and families and co-led the research and development study ‘Informed Choice, Families and Deaf Children’ leading to the production of national guidance for professionals and a comprehensive handbook for parents. She was also part of the research team at the University of Manchester which undertook the ‘Positive Support’ study on the impact of early identification on child and family outcomes in collaboration with UCL and Deafness Research UK.
Gwen’s particular interests are in Informed Choice, multi-professional teamwork and family support, child and family outcomes and sharing the news of the diagnosis of deafness following Newborn Hearing Screening. She also undertakes training and development work to support service improvement in multi-professional practice both at home and abroad.
Julia Divers
Julia completed her initial teacher training in 1981 and went on to work in a range of educational settings, with both deaf and hearing children.
In 1998-2000 Julia trained as a teacher of deaf children at the University of Hertfordshire, going on to complete her MA in Education and Communication in the following year.
Julia worked in the specialist provision for deaf children in a mainstream secondary school in Hertfordshire, before taking up a post as a specialist teacher for hearing impairment with the Specialist Advisory Service in Hertfordshire. This role involved fostering the capabilities of children with a hearing impairment, managing and monitoring their communication and developmental needs; offering advice, support and training to parents and mainstream schools and running a pre-school group for hearing impaired children and their carers.
Julia is currently working on the training programme for teachers of deaf children at the University of Hertfordshire as a visiting lecturer and supervisor. In 2010 she was appointed as Honorary Research Associate by University College London, which afforded her the opportunity to contribute to the development of this symposium.
Dr Chris Donlan
Chris Donlan was a teacher in special education for 15 years before taking a PhD in Psychology at the University of Manchester in 1994. He is now Deputy Head of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at UCL, and Director of Studies in Speech and Language Therapy. His research examines the effects of language difficulties on children’s mathematical development.
Dr Andrew Faulkner
Andrew Faulkner is Head of the UCL Research Department of Speech Hearing and Phonetic Sciences. He trained as an Experimental Psychologist and was awarded a PhD from the University of Oxford on the topic of auditory pitch discrimination. Since then he has worked as a speech and hearing scientist and has specialised in the study of speech perception by people with profound hearing loss. His work has spanned cochlear implants and residual acoustic hearing. At present his research topics include the joint use of hearing aids and cochlear implants and the development of pitch processing abilities in children with cochlear implants.
Judy Halden
Judy has been working with deaf people since 1978 which began by setting up a Specialist Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) Service at Heathlands School in St Albans and then developed this service throughout Hertfordshire. She went on to work in Camden and Islington SLT Service and at the RNID as Speech Therapy Advisor until 1990. She then joined the City Lit Centre for Deaf People where she ran the Speech and Language Therapy Service for both deaf and deafened adults and had the responsibility for running training courses for Deaf people and for professionals involved in working in the education of deaf people. She was also involved in developing and teaching on the Advanced Clinical Studies (ACS) course for SLTs wanting to specialise in deafness at City University. Judy has also worked as a specialist speech and language therapist in a bilingual unit for deaf children in Luton. Qualifying as a teacher of deaf children in 2002 Judy has also worked in a variety of educational settings and is an advisor, lecturer and supervisor for the University of Hertfordshire's training course for teachers of deaf children. She is currently working for Hertfordshire's Specialist Advisory Service as a specialist teacher for hearing impairment and is an honorary research associate for UCL's Division of Psychology and Language Sciences. In addition Judy works as a freelance assessor and consultant for specialist services to deaf people both in Education Authorities and Health Trusts. Judy was involved in the development of and still teaches on the CSD Part 1 and 2 courses.
Mary Kean
Mary Kean is the Lead for Communication and the Parent Engagement / Voluntary Sector Lead for the England NHS Newborn Hearing Screening Programme (NHSP). Prior to joining the NHSP programme Mary was a Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Manchester. Mary has been a Teacher of the Deaf for over 20 years and has worked in special schools, mainstream, peripatetic and advisory roles.
Mary’s particular
interests include the Government’s ‘Early Support’ programme and has also
recently undertaken advising on the care pathways for adults with learning
disabilities and the end of life care for those with long term illnesses.
Dr Merle Mahon
Dr Merle Mahon is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at UCL. She trained in South Africa as a speech and language therapist and audiologist and obtained her Psychology honours degree there. When she first came to London she worked as a researcher at Goldsmiths College on transposition in hearing aids. After that she worked as a specialist speech and language therapist for deaf people in Camden and Islington. In 1997 she was awarded her PhD at UCL for her research on interactions between deaf children and their parents in families where English is an additional language (EAL). Her current research includes the development of spoken English in deaf children from EAL families; multi-modal interaction (speech, gaze & gesture); intervention for preschool deaf children; outcomes for deaf teenagers http://www.hotproject.org.uk/ ; and the digital archiving of video and audio data http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/cava/.
Dr Gary Morgan
Most of my early work compared signed and spoken language acquisition. More recently I have been looking at the existence of SLI in signing children. This research is starting to reveal common and differing patterns of breakdown. My other major long standing interest has been in the relationship between language and cognitive development and this has taken me into research into the role of language in children’s Theory of Mind skills. The next work in this theme will be looking at the role of language experience in the development of executive functions and working memory (strand 5) and how children learn about iconicity (strand 2). In other work I have been exploring how signed languages have evolved from co-speech gesture and what role language development has played during this transition.
Ann Parker
Ann Parker practised as a speech and language therapist for many years, working with deaf children and adults for most of that time. She set up the first Local Authority specialist SLT service for deaf children, for the ILEA, and then worked as the RNID’s first full time National Speech and Language Therapy Adviser. She developed and ran (with Sheila Wirz and colleagues) the first RCSLT ACS course in SLT with deaf people, before becoming the Head of the RNID Language and Communication Division. She then moved into Higher Education, and was a Senior Lecturer at UCL before retiring to develop her role as a freelance educator and trainer in international Higher Education and Health sectors.
Dr Rachel Rees
Rachel Rees worked as a speech and language therapist for 16 years and, for most of this time, specialised in working with deaf children. For several years she was a Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) advisor on speech and language therapy with deaf children and an RCSLT representative on National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) and British Association of Teachers of the Deaf (BATOD) committees. She has contributed to joint RCSLT-BATOD conferences and documents. For the last ten years she has worked as a lecturer at UCL and completed a PhD titled “Deaf Children’s Acquisition of Speech Skills: A Psycholinguistic Perspective through Intervention”. She has worked closely with Joy Stackhouse and Bill Wells on the application of their speech processing model to clinical practice and contributed two chapters to their book “Children’s Speech and Literacy Difficulties 2: Identification and intervention”. She is currently the programme director for the BSc Speech Sciences degree at UCL and regularly teaches speech and language therapy students, as well as qualified therapists and teachers of the deaf. She is a member of the team setting up a joint UCL-City University project on “Communication Interventions with Pre-School Deaf Children”.
Professor Bencie Woll
Bencie Woll came to UCL from City University London where she held the Chair of Sign Language and Deaf Studies in the Department of Language and Communication Science. Since 2005 she has been a Professor in the Department of Cognitive Perceptual and Brain Studies at UCL and Director of the ESRC-funded Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre, the largest research grouping in this field in Europe.
Before coming to London, she was at Bristol, where she first worked on language acquisition in hearing children and then was a co-founder of the Centre for Deaf Studies, pioneering research on the linguistics of BSL and on Deaf Studies. Her research and teaching interests embrace a wide range of topics including the linguistics of British Sign Language (BSL) and other sign languages, the history and sociolinguistics of BSL and the Deaf community, the development of signed and spoken language in young children, and studies of language and the brain in deaf people. In recent years, she has broadened her work in this area to include developmental and acquired sign language impairments.
