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CHSL celebrates 90 years


Denver, Colorado -- The year was 1918. Woodrow Wilson was in the White House. World War I was coming to a close. The cost of a first-class stamp was a mere three cents ...

... and The Center for Hearing, Speech and Language began as The Colorado Hearing Society. In these early years, the members were volunteers who gave their time and resources to try to build a network of support services for the hearing impaired.

These respectable citizens were dependable, well-placed Denver citizens - housewives, husbands, business and civic leaders who were, more often than not, taking on a cause that meant something to them - that was close to their own hearts. Perhaps their children were struggling in school with speech delays or their aging parents were suffering profound hearing loss.

Back then, the hearing impaired relied upon an instructional process called "lip-reading." "Lip Reading" participants were taught analytic skills, such as recognizing how specific sounds "look" on the lips, and using context and body language to help understand what a speaker is saying. The method, now called "Speech-Reading", not only helps the member of the family who is hearing impaired, but other family members as well, in understanding how to better communicate with each other.

An important function of the Colorado Hearing Society was to endorse reputable hearing devices in their newspaper, the Mile High Bulletin. A point was made of denouncing fraudulent or "quack" devices, remedies or cures. Letters were written to the Denver Better Business Bureau and to local newspapers to stop the advertising of the fraudulent devices, remedies and cures.

By 1946, the group, now called the Denver Hearing Society, was offering speech therapy in schools. This set the stage for what would many years later become the organization's outstanding "flagship" program: KidScreen, a program designed to get kids "school-ready."

The 1970s was a time of unprecedented growth for the Center, including acceptance into Mile High United Way. A second office was opened in Colorado Springs in 1974. Soon thereafter, the Colorado Springs office became a proud member of Pike Peaks United Way.

In 1985, the newly named Center for Hearing, Speech and Language was born. Though our name has changed, our community-wide mission has remained much the same: to provide quality hearing, vision, speech, language, and literacy services to children and adults in Metropolitan Denver and Colorado Springs.

Although our services are available to people of all ages and income levels, what makes the Center unique is that we provide services regardless of ability to pay. Our partnerships with area United Ways, Sertoma Clubs, and hearing aid vendors enable us to provide deeply discounted or free state-of-the-art hearing devices. In the past 3 years, the Center's therapy department has been growing by leaps and bounds, offering an impressive variety of cutting-edge therapy services and well-respected literacy projects for children and adults.

Today, KidScreen is evaluating over 5,000 pre-school and school-age children in Denver and Colorado Springs, over half of whom are receiving financial assistance. Our well-regarded audiology department records over 4,000 patient visits a year and the Center's Hearing Aid Bank is helping low-income clients pay for those expensive hearing aids and assistive listening devices. We are a proud participant in the No Child Left Behind Program in partnership with Denver Public Schools and our Speech-Reading Classes are growing in popularity. Plans are underway to offer a "Log in to Language (L3)" Program, a literacy initiative for children and adults made possible as a result of our collaboration with Teaming for Technology, Colorado and IBM.

Please call CHSL at 303-322-1871 or send us an e-mail at info@chsl.org. Visit the new CHSL website at http://www.chsl.org.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

The Center for Hearing Speech and Language (CHSL Denver) has posted 1 story and 0 comments since joining on 8/22/2008. The Center for Hearing Speech and Language (CHSL Denver) 's average story rating is 5.
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