Add your experience to our next Helpful Hour topic!
The next title in the Helpful Hours series will consider how having hearing loss affects living well at home.
As per our current webinars, the session will be solutions focused and will include helpful tips and strategies, as well as information on the devices and smart technology that can support you across your day.
Since their launch Helpful Hours have helped over 500 people learn how they can get the best out of their audiology and medical appointments.
Building on this success, a team of peer support volunteers is working with the Service Design and Development Team to create the next topic in the Helpful Hours series and they are at the stage where we would love your input.
Hearing loss and home life
The new topic has a working title of ‘Hearing Loss and Homelife’ and aims to tackle many of the challenges people with hearing loss tell us they face at home. Whether that’s behavioural challenges like being called by someone in another room, to being safe and at ease in your own home. Emotional challenges such as not being confident in advocating for your needs and maintaining friendships.
The new topic will follow the current Helpful Hours model by sharing personal anecdotes that bring to life strategies and tips that help attendees find the solutions and support that work for them. The five segments and their working titles are:
- Your home & household – the making of a deaf-friendly environment.
- Family – relationships, events and occasions.
- Friendships – friends at home & preparing to meet out.
- Technology – devices and smart tech that help across the day.
- Moving Forward – Round up of support, solutions and staying positive.
We would like you to think of anything from your lived experience that could help others by considering the segments in these categories:
- Short anecdotes/stories – An experience that sums up your current experience.
- What ‘good’ looks like – What works, what could you expect, what would be ideal.
- Typical issues – Key things that need addressing.
- Aides – Recommended tips, techniques, technology, & deaf awareness products (badges, lanyards, wristbands)
- Signposting – Available information that backs up your point (websites, blogs, webinars, podcasts, articles, etc..)
None of the sections are compulsory/required, so you don’t need to complete for every category, or indeed each of the numbered segments. In that way, you are only submitting what readily applies.
We’ll assume deafness/hearing loss is the default profile to any replies given. However, if you would like to give feedback from a different/specific perspective such as; with tinnitus, mobility issues, as a hearing person accompanying someone, as a (deaf or hearing) carer, etc.. please add that valuable information in the reply.
What happens next?
We’ll use this to inform the content of the presentation and corresponding information sheets. However, if anything you suggest doesn’t quite fit, it may well be useful in other ways.
The text boxes in the survey are set to receive ‘long answers’, but they aren’t unlimited either. Be prepared to be succinct, or to self-edit.
Closing date for your feedback is Monday 4 August.
Once this stage is finished, we will work up a ‘ready to test’ version in September, which you will all be invited to attend. Public launch is planned for the autumn – and your help is much appreciated.