Deaf/Hard of Hearing

SKI-HI was established in 1972 to provide effective early intervention services to families who have infants, toddlers and young children who are deaf or hard of hearing. It was the first program established at the SKI-HI Institute and the program that gave the Institute its name. There are three programs at SKI-HI that serve families who have children who are deaf or hard of hearing. We believe the combination of these three programs composes a full and comprehensive early intervention model.

The SKI-HI Model of Early Intervention
The SKI-HI Model of Early Intervention is a routines-based program, so strategies and skills are shared with families so they can embed new skills into their daily routines and provide an environment where their child has access to language and can acquire language naturally, regardless of whether the family uses sign language or spoken language or a combination of the two.
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Deaf Mentors
A Deaf Mentor provides family-centered, home based, and curriculum-led early education in the home, focusing on Visual Communication, American Sign Language, and Bridging and Navigating Deaf and Hearing Experiences with the families with deaf children, birth to age six (or beyond).
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Snapshots
The Snapshots Program was set up with the purpose of introducing hearing parents to a wide variety of adults who are deaf or hard of hearing. Hearing parents who find out that their baby is deaf or hard of hearing often have no frame of reference for what it means to have a child who has different hearing abilities or what it means to live as a deaf or hard of hearing person.
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Stories

The benefits of the SKI-HI curriculum have been invaluable to teachers in our program, even more so to the parents who received the information. We have adopted the philosophy of SKI-HI and integrated it as the most important aspect of our infant program. We highly recommend the curriculum whenever the opportunity arises.

An Early Intervention Program Director

Finally, we (Deaf adults) are being asked to help. I feel honored to share my life with these beautiful children and their families. They value me and my experiences, and I see the parents accepting their child as a deaf child and learning how to communicate with their child and it thrills me. This is the best program in the world!

A Deaf Mentor

The bottom line is that without the Deaf Mentor Program we feel things would be very different at our house! Would we have appreciated deaf persons and become involved with the Deaf community to the extent we have? Would we enjoy the friendship of so many families in the same boat as us? Would we have a wonderful deaf person coming into our home each week sharing their language and culture with us and helping us to understand and appreciate Jade? Would Jade be enjoying the level of self-esteem and be progressing as well in her language and her school work as she is now? The answer is "no"! We are so thankful for the services and the insights the Deaf Mentor Program has provided our family and Jade and feel it is an essential program for all families with deaf children.

Deaf Mentor Program

We want our daughter to have deaf role models, friends and peers to interact with. We also want her to read and write in English. The bilingual-bicultural approach of the Deaf Mentor Program has been just perfect for us because it has taught us how we can do just that.