Guide By Your Side
What is Guide By Your Side?
The B.C. Early Hearing Program is very excited about our new Hands & Voices Guide By Your Side program. This innovative program is designed to provide emotional support and specialized knowledge from trained parents of children who are deaf or hard of hearing to families of children newly diagnosed with hearing loss. Research has shown that the type of emotional support preferred by most parents is through one-to-one parent matching such as this (Santelli, et al., 1996).
Where did Guide By Your Side (GBYS) come from?
Guide By Your Side was developed in the U.S. by a parent-driven, non-profit organization called Hands & Voices. Hands & Voices is dedicated to supporting families with children who are deaf or hard of hearing without a bias towards communication modes or methodology. For more information see www.handsandvoices.org.
There are several Hands & Voices Guide By Your Side programs currently operating in the U.S., but this is the first Canadian program. Our GBYS program is a fully funded part of the B.C. Early Hearing Program.
Why did BCEHP decide to start up a GBYS program in B.C.?
Our GBYS program came about when the BC Early Hearing Program asked the program’s Parent Advisory Group to make a recommendation about how to provide parent-to-parent support for families of children identified by newborn hearing screening. It was felt that there was a need for this kind of support for all families across the province right at the time of diagnosis – not connected to a particular intervention program, but available to all families, right at the beginning.
What is the role of the Parent Guide?
Guide By Your Side Parent Guides are trained to support families without bias towards modes or methods of communication or educational programming, and to model specialized parenting skills that emphasize meeting the unique needs of a child who is deaf or hard of hearing. Parent guides will reinforce the Hands & Voices slogan, "What Works for your Child is what makes the Choice right."
Who are the Parent Guides?
In B.C., our GBYS program consists of Teresa Kazemir, Parent Coordinator, and five parent guides. Some of the guides live in large metropolitan areas, and some live in more remote communities. Among them they have a wealth of personal experience raising children who are deaf and hard of hearing. Some of the guides have children with other needs in addition to hearing loss, and we have one guide who is familiar with a number of cultures and speaks more than one language.
Are all families in B.C. being contacted by a GBYS Parent Guide?
Guide By Your Side is available for any family of a child newly diagnosed with hearing loss in B.C. The Provincial Intervention Coordinator and the Service Coordinator for Intervention routinely refer families to the GBYS Parent Coordinator at the time of diagnosis. The Parent Coordinator will then match the family with a parent guide, who will contact the family within a week or two. The nature and extent of the communication between the guide and the family will vary from family to family, but the parent guide will be able to provide approximately six hours of service to each family. For some families this may involve more intense support right around the time of diagnosis, and for other families the service may be spread out over a number of months or even longer.
For more information about Guide By Your Side, please contact Teresa Kazemir at tkazemir@cw.bc.ca or 604 612-9193.
