The Shepherd Centre
Donna Sperandio, MEd, LSLS Cert AVT, Principal Listening and Spoken Language Specialist
The Shepherd Centre is a not-for-profit early intervention centre in New South Wales, Australia,
providing listening and spoken language services through an interdisciplinary approach to children
with hearing loss and their families.
The centre was founded in 1970 by Dr Bruce Shepherd, his late wife Annette, and their two children,
who were born profoundly deaf. The centre was the first of its kind in Australia to provide early
intervention for children with hearing loss and the opportunity for families to guide their child to
learn spoken language through listening.
The Shepherd Centre’s Early Intervention Program utilises the Auditory-Verbal therapy approach
with a family centred focus. The centre has an interdisciplinary team comprising of Listening and
Spoken Language Specialists, Audiologists, Child and Family Counsellors and an Assessments and
Research team.
The centre has five physical locations throughout New South Wales. Services are provided to families
who are geographically distant using a combination of telepractice and residential workshop
programs.
The Shepherd Centre is one of six centres within the First Voice Alliance. First Voice is the national
voice for member organisations whose primary focus is the provision of listening and spoken
language therapy services in Australia and New Zealand. It was established to play a leadership role
in shaping public policy and funding.
Interdisciplinary services provided at The Shepherd Centre
Listening and Spoken
Language Development
Audiology Services
Ear Nose and Throat (ENT)
Specialists
Child and Family
Counselling Service
Speech and Language
Assessments
Auditory-Verbal Therapy guides and coaches parents to teach their children to talk through
listening. Parents are encouraged to use every day routines as opportunities for their child
to learn spoken language. This approach facilitates natural speech and language
development and listening becomes an integral part of their child’s life, and is provided by
speech pathologists and teachers of the deaf that have undergone extensive training
towards international AVT certification.
Specialist paediatric Audiologists provide a range of services including hearing assessments,
speech perception testing, monitoring of a child’s middle ear and complete Cochlear Implant
and Baha services.
The Shepherd Centre works with Specialist ENT surgeons to provide families with medical
consultations in relation to their child’s hearing loss. The ENT surgeons are highly
experienced in grommet, tonsil, adenoid and Cochlear Implant surgery in children.
The Shepherd Centre’s Child and Family Counsellors work in partnerships with families to
enable and empower them families to solve problems, meet needs and achieve their
aspirations.
The Shepherd Centre carries out speech and language assessments at various ‘checkpoints’
in a child’s life.
Group Learning Programs
The Shepherd Centre offers a variety of group learning programs designed for parents and
children to attend together. Although children can develop their listening, speech and
language skills in a quiet therapy room, they need opportunities to practice and improve
these skills in more ‘real world’ situations, and learn from each other.
First Sounds Cochlear Implant Program
In 2001, The Shepherd Centre began its First Sounds Cochlear Implant Program as a joint initiative
with The Sydney Children’s Hospital. The program provides the medical, audiological and therapy
services needed to support a child and its family prior to and following cochlear implant surgery. The
First Sounds program provides a seamless approach to cochlear implant evaluation and provision
and is currently responsible for the audiological management of 133 clients with 234 cochlear
implants, and 7 clients with 11 Bahas.
Services for School Aged Children
In 2012, The Shepherd Centre began working towards the further provision of services to school
aged children, introducing The Clear Speech program. It is staffed by specialist speech pathologists
who focus on listening and parent training to improve a child’s articulation skills and overall
intelligibility. 2013 Initiatives include extended programs for graduates including social skill
development with focus on Theory of Mind.
Research and Clinical Outcomes
At The Shepherd Centre, achievements of our graduates (children leaving our service to go to school)
are measured using standardised assessments.
Of our graduating group in 2012, the median language and vocabulary scores for all graduates was
95 and 99 respectively. This means that as a group, Shepherd Centre graduates have gone to school
with language skills and word knowledge comparable to those of their normally hearing classmates.
Mentoring and Training Program
The Shepherd Centre has a dedicated, experienced team who work in supporting both internal and
external candidates towards certification as Listening and Spoken Language Specialists. There are
currently ten Certified Listening and Spoken Language Specialists on staff at the Shepherd Centre.
All members of our certification team continue to work with families and children regularly. This
ensures that they have current hands on experience in delivering Auditory-Verbal therapy programs.
The centre presents and attends all relevant international conferences in the field of Auditory-Verbal
therapy and hearing loss in children. This ensures that our team is up to date with international best
practice in all aspects of their work and relying on our own internal evidence based practice to guide
our services to families.
Summary
The Shepherd Centre is a well-established model of holistic, interdisciplinary early intervention
services for children with hearing loss and their families, who are achieving excellent outcomes in
the development of their listening and spoken language skills.
More information about the program at The Shepherd Centre can be found at
www.shepherdcentre.org.au