Services for deaf children in Missouri need improvement. This was the conclusion of the 1995 Missouri Deaf Education Task Force, and little has changed since then. (for the report, see report ) While some areas of the state have adequate services for some of the methods of deaf education, even these areas don't adequately provide all options. Additionally, in many areas of the state, particularly in rural areas, services are lacking or non-existent. For children age 0-3 who are served by First Steps, it is hard in many areas of the state to find professionals who are qualified to work with deaf children. Also, your First Steps caseworker may have little knowledge about deafness and may let their biases influence their recommendations for the family. Once a child turns age 3, the child is provided services by their local school district. In some instances, though, such services may be no more than placing the deaf child in a general special education class for children age 3-5, with nothing specifically provided to assist in the issues of deafness.
What about outreach services for preschool aged children 0-5 from public sources? The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education through Project Outreach of the Resource Center on Deafness at the Missouri School for the Deaf offers an outreach program statewide where a person goes one time a week to the home of the parents to provide assistance to families of deaf children. This person works part-time for Project Outreach, and has a degree in one of the following areas: deaf education, early childhood special education, elementary education, speech pathology, or a related area. The outreach worker is trained by MSD in the SKI*HI program. However, critics of the program point out that while the "SKI-HI" program used by Program Outreach is supposed to cover all options, an outreach worker who has not actually used a particular option may not be able to adequately explain it to parents. Some parents have also reported receiving biased information from Project Outreach about cochlear implants, where only the negative side was presented.
What about private outreach services? While Missouri can boast of three well-known private oral schools in St. Louis and an outreach center of one of the schools in the Kansas City area, they normally provide services for children age 0-3 through programs offered at the private school location, and don't offer any statewide outreach services.
With the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, every disabled child from 0-3 is supposed to be provided with an Individualized Family Service Plan, and every disabled child from 3-21 is supposed to be provided with an Individualized Education Program. For deaf children in Missouri, sometimes there are few choices provided in regards to deaf education. For example, your school may only offer Total Communication when your preference is Auditory-Oral or Bi-Bi. Or, your school may not be able to find a qualified teacher of the deaf or sign language interpreter to work with your child. In general, the choices available to you when your deaf or hard-of-hearing child is offered a program that you don't feel is satisfactory are:
Parents have tried all these different approaches. The options for a family with a deaf child are often not easy and frequently involve major sacrifices.
As far as the availability of various options for education of the deaf in Missouri, here's a brief overview, but there are no precise statistics from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education showing the number of programs in the state that offer the different options:
So, unless you're within commuting distance of St. Louis, the auditory-oral option is hard to come by in Missouri, unless you want to send your child there to live in the dorms. Likewise, unless you live near Fulton or want to send your child there to live in the dorms, the ASL option is lacking. Cued speech and auditory-verbal options are available in Missouri only if you make the effort yourself to find a cued speech instructor or auditory-verbal therapist in Missouri (of which there are almost none), bring in a cued speech instructor or auditory-verbal therapist from out-of-state to provide training to you and other people working with your child, or attend workshops on cued speech or the auditory-verbal approach out-of-state.
That's certainly not the optimal situation for deaf children in Missouri, but as of 2000 that's the situation. Some parents may not even be aware that there are other options for deaf education, because the options are so lacking in the state. There is room for a great deal of improvement in trying to make sure than all Missouri deaf and hard-of-hearing children have readily available to them a top-notch program for whichever option they and their parents want. The statistics provided by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education show that in 1999 there were 440 deaf students in K-12 in Missouri.
In this vein, during legislative session 2001 Missouri Representative Denny Meredith introduced legislation that would have created several regional resource centers and schools around the state.
Another piece of legislation introduced by Senator Peter Kinder would have provided to local schools educating deaf or hard-of-hearing children or providing services to deaf or HOH children coverage of all costs associated with providing special education to deaf or HOH children.
For your child's future, please keep informed of any legislative proposals related to deaf education or deaf issues in the future.