Your Baby Has Hearing Loss - Next Steps

What is early intervention and why is it important?

If your baby was recently identified as having a hearing loss, early intervention is a term you will likely hear. Although it may sound a bit intimidating, early intervention actually refers to providing support and services to your child and your family to help you understand your child’s hearing loss and make the best decisions you can for your child and your family. The goal of early intervention is to develop early communication skills.

Families of babies and children with hearing loss get early intervention support and services from professionals who are trained to provide the information families need to help their baby develop early communication.

Finding out your baby has a hearing loss can be a difficult time for parents. But it’s important to remember that the early months are some of the most critical learning times for your baby. Babies’ brains are programmed to begin learning language from the very beginning of their life. Early intervention services during infancy and early childhood provide critical opportunities to positively influence the development of children with a hearing loss.

For this reason, it is important to begin working with an early intervention specialist as soon as possible. They will be able to give you more information about your baby’s hearing loss and they can help you learn ways to take full advantage of play and home routines (for instance, changing diapers and feeding time) to encourage early learning.

You may find it helpful to read about other parents' early intervention experiences.

The professionals working for the BC Early Hearing Program believe you have the right to the information and support you need in order to make appropriate decisions for your baby and family, and to help you learn how to best support your baby’s development. No one specific method or approach has been found to work best for all children. We encourage you to work with your early interventionists and audiologist to discover what approach works best for your own baby and family.

The BCEHP family path

The Family Path is a guide to the early services your family receives at various stages of your baby's development.

Download a pdf of the BCEHP family path in English (link to the left), Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Farsi, French, Korean, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, or Vietnamese.