Dave Freytag Says...

Comments at a Gathering of Hearing Speech and Deaf Center Board Members by Dave Freytag, Chairman of the 2009 Annual Fund 

Laurie asked if I would say a few words as to why I agreed to head the annual fund once again.  It is really pretty simple — it gave me the opportunity to this year build our campaign around our pediatric (pre-school) programs and the pressing need to expand our efforts in that area.  

Over time while working as a volunteer consultant to Laurie and then joining the board I have had the opportunity to learn about our early intervention activities for pre-school children — specifically our Speech Camp and our Building Blocks for Literacy program.  I became more and more interested in this area as I was exposed to any ever increasing body of data indicating that perhaps as high as 40% of pre-school children in low income neighborhoods do not test ready for school at age five.  Even more alarming is a related study which finds that a child’s potential for development of language skills is pretty much set before entering elementary school.  The inescapable conclusion: there is a tremendous unmet need for pre-school intervention to enable these children to achieve some level of success in school — and in life. 

I decided earlier this year that I wanted to learn more about what we offer and specifically how early intervention efforts work.  I started by volunteering at our Speech Camp.  Once I had the opportunity to interact with these kids I was hooked.  Let me introduce you to one of them — my friend, Ethan.  He is four years old, one of three kids in a typical one-parent, low-income family.  He has a correctable speech disability known as Apraxia.  He was making good headway in his individual therapy sessions, but his attendance in those sessions and in speech camp was sporadic at best.  The logistics of getting him to the center were just too much of a challenge for his well-meaning, but overloaded mom.  She welcomed my offer to help with Ethan.  I now take him to his twice weekly speech therapy sessions, and I am trying to learn enough of the therapy methodology to help his verbal development during our “fun times” together.  When this boy first came to the Center, he could basically communicate only with one- syllable, unintelligible grunts.  Today he is steadily mastering more and more words and word sounds.   All I can say is that his continuing progress brings me great joy, great appreciation for the work of the Center, and great hope for this engaging youngster. 

Hopefully Ethan’s story will have a happy ending.  The problem, of course, is that his story is one among thousands involving pre-school kids who have little or no chance for success in elementary school - and ultimately become drop-out candidates as teenagers.  As detailed in our annual fund letter, a large percentage of these kids have no disability per se — they just lack language development because of the conditions under which they are being raised.  My experience with Ethan and with speech camp has convinced me that with more funding and more help from volunteers we can have a much larger impact in this area.  It goes without saying that providing individual therapy to more children with specific disabilities requires more funding for speech therapists.  But with modest funding, combined with increased volunteer participation, we can expose many more kids who do not have a defined disability to the wonderful world of words, language, and ideas.  So I hope in 2010 to have the opportunity to work with Laurie and her staff as they develop plans to help more pre-school kids.  The success of our annual fund campaign will be an important determinant of how well we can meet that objective and I urge you all to be as generous as you can.

Excerpts from the annual fund letter:

• Vocabulary at age five reliably predicts vocabulary in grade six according to a study recently reported by Kathleen McCartney, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Early vocabulary is a very reliable predictor of adult literacy and communication skills — critical keys to success.
  
• In low-income communities the number of pre-school children testing with moderate to severe speech language impairment often exceeds 40% (compared to 5%-8% in the general population).  Our testing for Head Start has confirmed this level of dysfunction locally.  Aggressive intervention can help these at-risk children before they experience failure in school and become tomorrow’s dropouts.
  
• A recent finding published in Texas Medicine: 84% of incarcerated youths have communication disorders and 80% of adults in prison are functionally illiterate.  The cost to society of language dysfunction is staggering.  The expense to incarcerate is about $24,000 per year. For about $3,000 per year we can turn a child’s life around with language therapy (and in many cases prevent incarceration later in life).