WELCOME
Welcome to the Dorset Deaf Childrens Society website. Membership is free for all families with a hearing impaired child living in Dorset or for supporters of hearing impaired children and their families living in Dorset. We are a registered charity who organise social events and provide grants and equipment for hearing impaired children and their families throughout Dorset. We also provide information to help families make informed choices for their children's education and welfare.
As a registered charity we rely entirely on donations and fundraising to raise funds. All of our committee members are volunteers who are either parents of hearing impaired children, have a hearing loss or work with hearing impaired children.
On a regular basis we pay for the provision of CD/MP3 music leads to enable children to listen to music directly through their hearing aids and Peadiatric Care Kits for hearing aids. These are provided via the Hearing Impaired Support Service. Our grants have included a fax machine enabling a family to communicate with their hearing impaired child at boarding school, signalong dictionaries, the provision of literature holders and support literature at the audiology clinics in Dorset, vibrating alarm clocks and new digital cameras for the Hearing Support Service in Dorset.
We have also been pleased to help some of our hearing impaired children's parents with the cost of sign language courses at their local college/adult education centres.
Over the past two years we have funded QWERTY keyboard courses for deaf youngsters to learn the life skill of touch typing - a valuble asset for communication and career skills for any hearing impaired child.
But our main focus is to organise events for hearing impaired children and their families to meet each other and make friends.
All the hearing impaired children in Dorset are in schools spread all over the county and never get the chance to meet other hearing impaired children. They quite often feel that they are the only child with a hearing loss. The children have varied levels of hearing loss and are mostly aural but some use sign support. We support all the children with whatever communication they need. Our activities and events enable all the children and their families to meet each other, make friends and have fun!
All of our trustees are always available for advice and help or even just for a chat.
NEWSLETTERS
To view the latest edition of our bi annual newsletter click on the link below:
To read the latest edition of our newsflyer with details of upcoming events please use the link below
Let's Hear It Briefly - January 2012
We are associated with the National Deaf Childrens Society - to view their website use this link - http://www.ndcs.org.uk
DDCS CONSTITUTION
View the new DDCS Constitution - voted in at the 2009 AGM.
CHILD PROTECTION AND WELFARE POLICY
In line with The National Deaf Childrens Society guidelines the Dorset Deaf Childrens Society have adopted a child protection policy. The policy is based on NDCS guidelines and can be accessed by clicking on the link below.
(You will need Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to view it)
www.ndcs.org.uk/document.rm?id=2757
The person responsible for implementing these guidelines is Martin Ring.