MONMOUTH – The Teaching Research Institute, housed at Western Oregon University, received a $10.5 million award from the United States Department of Education to create a national technical assistance and dissemination center for deaf-blind (D-B) youth, which began operations October 1.

The award will fund the center for five years, including offices at the Helen Keller National Center in New York, Hilton Perkins in Massachusetts, University of Tennessee and D-B Link at WOU.

This is the only category-specific congress-mandated award in technical assistance and dissemination.

Facts

• Two of 1,000 youth with disabilities are deaf-blind, totaling 9,500 across the country
• Only 75 teachers in the United States are trained to work with deaf-blind youth
• Extremes of disability range from impairments in sight and hearing to complete deaf-blindness
• Ninety-five percent of D-B children have other disabilities

Key Points

• The population is small enough that individual states and agencies can’t devote a department or even full-time person to these youth, so the national center this award finances will provide resources to those who work with D-B youth
• Improvements in medical technology saves more at-risk babies, thus creating more of a demand for services, including physical, occupational and special education
• There is no correlation between D-B and intelligence, but their ability to obtain information from a distance is nil, learning must take place within three feet

Quotes

Kat Stremel:

• Stremel is the project coordinator for the grant, as well as a professor with TRI. Her work with deaf-blind youth began 16 years ago with state grants to work with families of infants and toddlers to provide direct services in Mississippi.

• “I learned there to find the ‘zone of learning’ – to build on the strength of the child and the family – to recognize the individiual skills at this level – in every case, the child has some ability to respond, and seeing this is the start of building communication for that child and family.”
• “What we hope is that working together is progress; staying together helps solve problems; and this equals success. Without this national effort, these kids would be lost.”

Meredith Brodsky, director of the Teaching Research Institute:

• “This project brings a staff with extensive years of expertise across many areas – it takes diverse professional skills and experience to make this a success – “

Interview contacts:

Kat Stremel, 913-677-4562, stremelk@wou.edu
Meredith Brodsky, 503-838-8824, brodskm@wou.edu