I chose to interview my mother. Her name is Barbara Lee and she works for the Riverside County Office of Education. She is an infant teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing. She has been working in her position for about 30 years and she still loves it!
The human problems she works with are working with hearing impaired children and their families. There are both parent-child classroom settings and in-home settings. Some of the technologies used are hearing aids and auditory trainers. An auditory trainer is an electronic device that allow a person to focus attention on a speaker and reduce the interference of back round noise. I believe the model my mom’s position would exemplify would be Human Services, since she does teaching and parent support.
A person involved with the agency by newborn hearing screenings, which refers newborn babies that have not passed his or her audiological screenings. Another way to be involved is by parent referral through Regional Center or other referrals from other infant programs. The rewarding part of Leslie’s job is that she can increase parent child communication, bonding, understanding and, overall developmental growth. She is also involved in making sure the child is placed in the appropriate program after the child turns 3.
If Barbarba had the option to make a change in the program it would be to add a second class during the week. At the present time, there is only one class a week. The second class would be added after the child turned 2. Overall, she would like to provide more services for the children, but there unfortunately is not enough funding.
The initial reason my mother started to work in the human services profession was because she felt there were not enough people that represented the deaf and hard of hearing. The college my mother went to which was Lewis and Clark University in Oregon had a well-known program for training teachers of the deaf. After