Our Ewing Foundation team are pleased to offer deaf education professionals online bite-size learning opportunities. Each 30-minute session includes an introduction to the topic, time for discussion and a take-home summary of the session. These sessions are free of charge, and provide a great bite-size opportunity to network and share good practice!

Details for 2025 to follow shortly. Please email info@ewing-foundation.org.uk if you would like to be notified when dates are released. 

You may also be interested in a free training event being offered by Auditory Verbal UK on 4th February 2025 for professionals working in Wales. Find out more.

Recent examples of Ewing Foundation’s free online training:

‘Success from the start’: An updated version of the Monitoring Protocol for deaf babies and children, ‘Success from the start’ is a resource that can be used with deaf children from birth to three years to monitor progress and inform target setting for next steps. This 30-minute session reflected on why it was first developed, what it is and how it can be used as a tool to empower parents to promote positive outcomes for their deaf child. ‘Success from the start’ is a developmental resource produced by the National Deaf Children’s Society. Click here to view ‘Success from the start’.

Target Setting: Following our language assessments bite-size, many Teachers of Deaf Children and Young People asked that we look at target setting for deaf children. This session looked at what constitutes a SMART target, unpicked confusion between targets and strategies and looked at how we should use assessment data to inform our target setting, in order to maximise deaf learners’ outcomes.

Let’s talk about the Ling-Madell-Hewitt (LMH) Test Battery
This session provided an introduction to the LMH Test Battery and what led to its development. We considered what the LMH may tell us about a child’s access to the sounds of speech and how this information could be used to inform our conversations with audiologists.

An overview of the CELF-5 language assessment with particular reference to assessing pragmatic skills (please note that this is a repeat of the bite-size CELF session delivered in the spring term) This session looked at the potential for using the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals 5 (CELF-5) to assess the language of deaf learners from age 5 to 21 years.

The CELF-5 allows us to assess deaf learners’ language holistically giving an overview of areas of strength and challenge. The updated CELF-5 has two additional sections to assess deaf learners’ pragmatics skills. The Pragmatics Profile is a checklist of speech intentions and the Pragmatics Activity Checklist provides activities to set up and use with the child, providing opportunities to observe what pragmatic skills they have and how they use these pragmatic skills. This bite-size session provided an overview of the CELF, with particular reference to the assessment of deaf learners’ pragmatic skills.

An overview of the information and advice section of the new NICE Guidelines on otitis media with effusion in under 12s, and suggestions of resources available to help you support families and early years settings The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published new guidelines on otitis media with effusion in under 12s in August 2023. The previous guidelines were published fifteen years before in 2008. The new guidelines include a change in terminology from a period of ‘Watchful Waiting’ to ‘Monitoring and Support’. Given that 80% of children will have glue ear on at least one occasion by the age of four, the session considered the advice that families need to promote positive outcomes for young children with a fluctuating temporary hearing loss caused by glue ear. Thank you to everyone who attended our first afternoon learning opportunity.

The new Area SEND Inspection Framework: a recent ‘lived’ experience of a Team Leader for Deaf and Hearing support.  A Qualified Teacher of the Deaf (QToD) and Team Leader discussed her three week Area SEND Inspection experience; the information requested by inspectors, key lines of enquiry and how she prepared for the interview. This session, which can be viewed below, gives you an overview of the process and will support your own preparation for Area SEND Inspection.