The Shepherd Centre has signed a partnership to export more than 50 years of expertise to Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture Hospital to improve outcomes for Japanese children with hearing loss and cochlear implants.
After a decade long relationship, the organisations formalised a partnership and will deliver a pilot early intervention program starting in April 2025, the first publicly funded early intervention service for deaf children in Japan.
Shizuoka Prefecture and Japanese governments will provide funding, with additional support of $6.5 million from the Australia-Japan Foundation.
The Shepherd Centre CEO Dr Aleisha Davis attended the official signing on 5 November 2024 at Shizuoka Prefecture Government building.
The pilot program will train Japanese clinicians to support deaf children with cochlear implants to boost their listening and spoken abilities to that of their hearing peers.
In Australia, 94% of children with hearing loss are diagnosed before three months of age but in Japan, it takes significantly more time for diagnosis and intervention to occur.
Australian children typically receive cochlear implants at six months old, compared to two years in Japan.
In 2023, all 65 graduates from The Shepherd Centre enrolled in their primary school of choice with listening and spoken abilities comparable to their hearing peers. In contrast, Japanese children with significant hearing loss are educated separately, impacting their development and social integration.
“The Shepherd Centre is a world leader in early intervention for deaf children,” Dr Davis said.
“We provide evidence-based wraparound services, which involves the care from a multidisciplinary team of audiologists, family and child counsellors, and listening and spoken language specialists and therapists.
“It’s this model that means that deaf children with a cochlear implant go on to have listening and speaking skills that are on par with their hearing peers.”
Japanese children with hearing loss face significant challenges including delayed diagnosis and limited access to specialised services.
The Japan Hearing Vision initiative, launched in 2019, had made strides in newborn hearing screening and early cochlear implantation but there remained a lack of specialised services to teach children how to use devices effectively across Japan.
“The Shepherd Centre team will provide training to Japanese clinicians in Shizuoka to build local knowledge and capability so they can support deaf children with cochlear implants use their devices effectively, and learn crucial listening and speaking skills,” Dr Davis, a speech pathologist, said.
“We are thrilled to make our partnership with the Shizuoka Prefecture official. It’s the result of a decade-long relationship, sharing The Shepherd Centre’s expertise and world-leading experience in Australia, to create a world of choice and opportunity for children with hearing loss in Japan.”
House of Representatives member for Shizuoka, Ms Yoko Kamikawa added: “The main characters are children with hearing loss.
“We believe that it is necessary for us to do everything in our power to ensure that these children have words and language throughout their lives and to open up various possibilities for them.”
The Shepherd Centre is a for-purpose organisation providing specialised programs for children with hearing loss and their families. Its programs meet the needs of children of all ages; from a world-leading early intervention system for babies and toddlers to a mentoring program, Hear for You, which supports school-aged children and teenagers.
The centre supports more than 900 families across Australia with online telehealth sessions for rural and regional areas, in-person centres in NSW, Tasmania, the ACT and a range of workshops in Queensland for children and teenagers.
Its global platform HearHub supports health professionals working with children with hearing loss all over the world.
