Loud Shirt Day encourages New Zealanders to dress in their brightest outfits, donate to the NZ cochlear implant programmes, and give the gift of sound
Cochlear implants provide children and adults who are hard of hearing with access to sound, but receiving an implant isn’t simply about hearing.
Seven-year-old Te Waiwaha Prangnell is a bright and bubbly girl who loves dancing, playing football, wall climbing and reading with her mum. She also has cochlear implants after a hearing issue was detected in her newborn hearing screen when she was just a few weeks old.
Te Waiwaha, and thousands of other adults and children with cochlear implants, are the focus of Loud Shirt Day 2024 – a national fundraising event and awareness campaign being held on Friday, 18 October. New Zealanders are encouraged to dress up in their brightest outfits and hold fundraising events at workplaces, homes and schools throughout the country.
Loud Shirt Day is the annual appeal of The Hearing House (THH) and the Southern Cochlear Implant Programme (SCIP) – the only two charities in New Zealand dedicated to helping children and adults with a cochlear implant learn to listen, speak and reconnect with school, work and the community.
Communication is a huge part of our journey
The diagnosis of Te Waiwaha’s profound deafness came as a real shock to her parents Te Ao and Ben, who hadn’t experienced hearing loss before.
“I felt a real sense of loss for our whānau – I guess I was in mourning,” says Te Ao (Ngati Pikiao), who’s head of dance at Western Heights High School in Rotorua.
“But I’m a glass half-full kind of person, and I knew there would be a journey ahead where she would be loved and supported,” she says.
“I also wanted to preserve her deafness as part of her culture, and encourage acceptance and normalisation at every step,” she says.
Te Waiwaha started at Kids.com daycare in Rotorua when she was three months old, and at the same time started learning sign language through the local First Signs programme. She followed her older sisters Arahinga and Rangitapu into the Rūmaki Reo unit at Rotorua Primary School and is now a trilingual Year 3 student, swapping between her languages with ease.
“Communication is a huge part of ou
r journey,” says Te Ao. “It’s important that we communicate on a level that works for everyone – sometimes that’s sign, other times it’s reo.”
Passionate about breaking down barriers
As a full-time teacher, Te Ao tries to incorporate as many opportunities into Te Waiwaha’s daily life as she can, while at the same time making sure that it fits in with the demands of busy family life. All the girls are keen performers, regularly taking part in dance and drama productions.
Te Ao says Te Waiwaha has found her passion playing football for the Ngongotahā Typhoons – she plays alongside older sister Rangitapu. Dad Ben is the coach and Te Ao says it’s one of the ways he’s able to spend special time with Te Waiwaha, who’s the youngest on the team.
“She loves wearing her implants and tends to ask me to mute the roger wireless technology so she can concentrate on the game.
“She loves to sing with her sister Rangitapu, and has taken an interest in roller blading at school. When we’re in Ohakune she loves to wall climb and is very good at it!”
Te Ao has also encouraged independence and self-responsibility. It’s Te Waiwaha’s job to put her implants (or sound processors) on every day, and then back on the special charging station set up in her room every night.
“Te Waiwaha gets along with everyone, and her friends treat her like a normal kid,” says Te Ao. “Her teachers speak highly of her, and she takes responsibility for her cochlear implants and the roger when she’s at school and home.
“She has a great support system with her school, outside organisations and her whānau. Special acknowledgement goes to Toni Werahiko from Ko Taku Reo, her teachers, the learning support team and senior leadership at Rotorua Primary School.
“I’d like Kiwis to know that when you see a cochlear implanted child - they are not fragile or disadvantaged. They are very much a kid who loves to do everything else like a hearing child.”
The Hearing House a key part of family’s support network
Te Waiwaha received her cochlear implants when she was six months old, and the Prangnell whānau was supported by The Hearing House as Te Waiwaha learned to process the sound she received through her cochlear implants to communicate.
Te Ao describes Te Waiwaha’s switch-on as a “magical moment.”
“I fell in love with her more,” she says.
The Hearing House has remained a key part of the family’s support network since then, with Rotorua-based speech and language therapist Renique Williams now visiting Te Waiwaha directly at school. Te Ao says that because of her progress, the visits have been reduced which is a great sign that Te Waiwaha is meeting her milestones and level expectations.
“The Hearing House recently upgraded her to new N7s processors,” says Te Ao. “This is the first time she got to pick her own colour, and she’s very proud of her deafness and embraces her differences.”
A comprehensive specialist care model
Surgery and the subsequent switch-on is only one part of the cochlear implant process. Clients need to learn how to use the technology and interpret the new sounds through ongoing audiology and speech and language therapy.
The programmes and services offered by SCIP and THH include assessment, cochlear implant surgery, listening and spoken language therapy, audiology, outreach programmes for regional and remote patients, and whānau support and counselling services. Both organisations are also committed to clinical research and professional development.
The Southern Cochlear Implant programme (SCIP) and The Hearing House (THH) have been providing specialised care to more than 2,000 adults and children who access sound with cochlear implants throughout Aotearoa New Zealand for the past 20 years.
With offices in Auckland (THH), Christchurch and Wellington (SCIP) our passionate and dedicated teams of audiologists, specialised therapists, and support staff deliver a range of services and therapy programmes to assist people with cochlear implants and their wider whānau as they learn to listen and communicate.
Our teams work with clients, whānau and partners to establish a community of care that enables people to make choices about their own lives at each stage of their journey, with a variety of flexible and creative approaches tailored to suit any communication mode, language, or culture.
As charities, we rely on fundraising and donations to bridge the shortfall in the public funding we receive to provide unique services and programmes to our kiritaki (clients), including outreach clinics and the Cochlear Implant Repair Fund, and to help cover our operating costs.
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