Summer is waning; fall is coming. And I wonder, where has the time gone? It is three and a half years – almost to the day – when the Colorado Commission for the Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Deafblind (CCDHHDB) was awarded the HRSA grant that is funding the refresh of our Colorado EHDI system. And, as I write, we are readying ourselves to apply for funding for the next five years.
I want to share a supplemental grant opportunity that was offered by our federal funder last spring. We applied for this supplemental grant which was designed to be administered along with our current grant. The aim of the supplemental funds is to investigate child language outcomes. We found out, just a few days before I wrote this piece, that Colorado was awarded one of these competitive grants. As a result, our work will expand. We are well-positioned to study child language outcomes because we have had a child language assessment in place for more than 30 years. Thanks are due to Hal Weber, the CDPHE manager during my tenure , who gave me the “green light” to create The Family Assessment of Multi-Disciplinary Interactional Learning for the Young Child (aka; The FAMILY Assessment). It is an assessment that has withstood the test of time having been used for more than three decades. People familiar to many of us have supported the implementation of The FAMILY Assessment: Allison Sedey, Research Associate at the University of Colorado; Christy Yoshinaga-Itano before her; Colorado Hearing (CO-Hear) Resource Coordinators at CSDB; Ashley Renslow, Early Education Coordinator at CSDB; and others to whom I apologize for not naming them. Having language and developmental data from The FAMILY Assessment allowed us to write a fundable supplemental grant. Coincidentally, the next round of federal EHDI funding is heavily-focused on child language outcomes.
In other news, I want to remind you that agendas and meeting notes for all task forces, the COEHDI Alliance, focus groups and subcommittee meetings are posted on our website. The URL for our site is: www.coehdi.org. If you log onto this site, you can also view materials that we have created and disseminated. Materials include brochures, newsletters, and infographics; they are available in English and Spanish, and some are translated into American Sign Language.
As we prepare the next grant application, COEHDI continues to work on all aspects of our system as we strive for compliance with 1-3-6 goals. It is my pleasure to be partnering with all of you on these efforts.
~ Arlene Stredler-Brown, PhD, CCC-SLP, director of COEHDI
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