Read the full transcript here

On episode 89 of the All About Audiology podcast, Dr. Lilach Saperstein speaks with audiologist Batya Jacob. Batya is an audiologist by profession and also is the founder of a free hearing aid lending program. When Batya shares the origin story behind the program, when her son needed to get hearing aids, she realized that medical insurance in general doesn’t cover hearing aids and that they are quite expensive. She now supports those who are Deaf or HoH with organizing a free lending program. This program is open to the global community and anyone can benefit from it; even you! Contact batyaj@ou.org for more information. 

This week on the All About Audiology podcast:   

• 7:00 –  Since hearing aids are expensive, parents may want to put money aside in a special place for the future’s sake.

• 8:00 – Most medical insurance companies do not cover the cost of hearing aids

• 10:40 -If a hard of hearing child is prescribed the use of hearing aids, it’s important that they have access to properly fit hearing aids as soon as possible

• 21:00 – The earlier young individuals learn about inclusion, the more likely they will be attuned to equitable access as an adult, employer, etc.

• 25:00 – It is so powerful when a community promotes a sense of collective sharing in order to take care of each other!

• 29:00 – Give your child the proper time and attention that they deserve in order for them to reach their full potential.

For more resources and research visit:

All About Audiology Website 

All About Audiology Facebook group  

All About Audiology Instagram

And the Prodana pay-it-forward platform here: https://prodana.org/practioner/lilach-saperstein/audiology-counseling–dr–lilach-saperstein

(Guest Links)

• Yachad

• All About Equipment- Episode 33 with Dr. Julie Renshaw
• All About Innovations In Hearing Aids – Episode 76 – with Dr. Jodi Saski-Miraglia
• All About The Stigma and Benefits of Hearing Aids – Episode 77 with Dr. Brian Taylor

Transcript

All About Audiology Transcription (first 15 minutes)

Dr. Batya Jacobs:

I work for Yachad. But I’m an audiologist, I understand how hearing aids work, I understand how hearing loss works, we could create a system where we collect used hearing aids from people because they’ve got new hearing aids because they’re not using them for whatever reason, because unfortunately, somebody has passed away… Let’s collect those hearing aids. Let’s work with audiologists and hearing aid dealers in different parts of the country, and it’s spreading around the world a little bit now, where we can offer to people, a free lending program, where people can send us their audiograms, their hearing loss table, and we can match as close as possible the hearing aids we have in our stock to their hearing loss.

Dr. Lilach Saperstein:

Welcome back to the All About Audiology podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Lilach Saperstein. And on this show, we talk about so many different aspects of audiology and your experience with the field of audiology. Because there is so much that goes with it. It’s not just for testing and maybe getting devices, but it’s a much bigger experience of how this affects your life, your child’s life, someone that you love. So we are always talking about the different elements of having someone in your life who is deaf or hard of hearing, especially a child. Or if that is your experience. In addition, the professionals that are working with this wonderful population, we have SLPs, and audiologists, and teachers, joining and tuning into the podcast. So thank you all for being supporters of the All About Audiology Podcast. Today on the show, we’re talking about the price of hearing aids and the prohibitive access to devices when you need them and cannot get access to them. Well, what are you to do? There are so many incredible people lobbying, and working with insurance, and trying to change laws to make it that these very expensive devices can be accessible to more and more people. But there is someone doing something very unique… So I’m excited to introduce you to Batya Jacob, an audiologist in New Jersey, who is going to be telling us about free lending society and other things. So welcome Batya to the show. 

BJ:

Thank you for having me. Such a pleasure to meet you and to be here. 

LS:

Thanks. I love talking. That’s number one. But also love learning about what is going on underground. As this is an issue a lot of people have. We hear it from everybody. So so expensive, 1000s of dollars expensive to get a pair of hearing aids, I mean, even just one. And in early intervention, things are covered. If you have really good insurance, things may be covered. And of course, this is also different in many different parts of the world. A lot of different countries have different ways that they set it up. So I’m curious to hear how you got into this. But before that, I am interested in your background and how you even got into audiology. 

BJ:

I think it started when I was a little kid. I read a lot of books about Helen Keller, and I got very motivated by her life. So I decided that I wanted to work with this deaf and hard-of-hearing population and coming from a world of… my father was a pediatrician, and so I have this medical model in my head, I decided I wanted to go into audiology. I was a student in speech and hearing at Boston University’s. [It was a] different century. I then met my husband who has a deaf brother, you know, God leads you in different ways. We decided to get married, I kind of became the, in some way, the sign language interpreter of the family, certainly at all religious celebrations of the family because nobody really in that family knew sign language and he was communicating with sign language. 

LS:

And at what point did you learn sign language?

BJ:

I decided to take a sign language class in college because I said if half the people who are coming to me communicate by sign language, I need to be able to communicate with them. Whether I wanted my clients to be able to speak or sign I needed them to communicate and how am I going to be able to communicate with people if they’re only coming in signing?

LS:

Wow. This has to be a whole other episode.(Laughs)

BJ:

A whole other conversation about communication, which is really truly a whole different discussion. And I’m not an interpreter in any way, trust me. So I became this like, kind of in lieu of a real sign language interpreter, it was me. My husband and I got married, we had three children and then we had a set of twins, and the twins: girl and boy are at birth. Probably two hours later I turned to my husband, I said I can’t tell you our daughter hears I know our son is hearing less than cheese… and everybody said to me, you’re crazy, you are this hyper-crazy parent, why are you putting problems where they aren’t?. This was before universal screening of babies. The twins are now 32 and a half. They didn’t want to test him in the hospital, they said I was absolutely out of my mind. They made every excuse possible. And I was so sure he could not hear the same as his twin sister. I was trained to look at babies and listen to them hear [and] see what they were doing. I literally bundled the two babies up. Took them up to my graduate school program at the University of Connecticut to my professors. And sure enough, my daughter’s hearing was normal. And my son had a severe to profound hearing loss.

LS:

You were able to see that so soon after birth.

BJ:

Literally, I tell you, within hours of his birth. It was so clear that the phone would ring that she would stop nursing and he would just keep nursing. We had hearing aids on him by the time he was five weeks old, to a point where we would tape the ear molds into his ears because they were so tiny. 

LS:

Yeah. 

BJ:

And I was called aggressive. I was accused of making my baby look like an old man.

LS:

Wow!

BJ:

You wanted stories, right? (Laughs) Anything you can imagine, but we were determined that he was going to communicate with whatever modality he could. And he was on early intervention by the time he was six weeks old. He now lives in Israel. He is an accountant. He is married with three hearing children. If you met him, you would think he had Bluetooth in his ears, you wouldn’t even realize necessarily from his speech that he doesn’t hear.

COVID was very hard with masks, I must tell you. And as parents, realizing that hearing aids were going to be a lifetime investment for him, we put money aside when he was born. So that he would have this foothold, that we would have money, that he would be able to afford hearing aids whenever he needed. But we quickly realized that medical insurance in general doesn’t cover hearing aids. Because in America, at least the way the government has written the law. Hearing aids are categorized as optional prosthetic devices. That’s the terminology in the federal government. If they’re optional, they don’t have to be covered. And I work for a program called Yachad, which is an international program that works with individuals with all sorts of disabilities, including developmental disabilities, mobility disabilities, Asperger’s, ADHD, hearing loss, and deafness is one of them. We have had a lobby going on for at least 10 years now, trying to get the word optional to necessary. Because if we can change the word to necessary, then the insurance companies will start to cover the cost of hearing aids.

LS:

Wouldn’t that be something?

BJ:

But the lobby blocks for medical insurances are much stronger than we are, unfortunately. I’ve been working for Yachad now for almost 25 years. We have been actively trying to get hearing aids covered. There are some insurances that are starting slowly, slowly to cover a piece of it. But not the whole thing. There are parts of Medicare, Part C, the Medicare Advantage, that are starting to cover a piece of it, but not the whole thing. And what we started to hear, what I started to hear from parents especially was: “the school district will purchase my child’s hearing aid, but they’re telling me the hearing aid belongs to the school. So my child goes to school and puts the hearing aids in their ear, and it’s three o’clock when the day is over. My child has to leave their hearing aids in school, and they say is my child’s own deaf”

LS:

I’m raging… boiling. I’m trying to do that quietly, but oh my gosh.

BJ:

So in the summer, there are no hearing aids. From three o’clock in the afternoon till eight o’clock the next morning, there are no hearing aids. We were creating children that were deaf, most of their awake time. And in the social environments of family and friends and on weekends. And then we look at older people on limited incomes, who can’t afford these hearing aids. When my son, before he moved to Israel, we bought hearing aids, before he met Aliya before he moved, they were $5,000 each. Most people don’t have that cushion to be able to purchase that. 

LS:

Right. And I think this is one of those things that people don’t talk about very often. When you sort of think that audiology is part of healthcare and in general there’s a lot of issues with accessing all sorts of different healthcare. Models are very broken… But when it comes to hearing aids, I think people almost assume. So automatically necessary, of course, it should be covered. Until it becomes your problem and then you realize, wait a minute, not really. 

BJ:

Right. And so many people said to me, if the person’s old, what do they need to hear when they’re older? Or…

LS:

Huh? 

BJ:

That child doesn’t need to hear till they go to school. So why aren’t you putting a hearing aid on them till they’re five? And I’m like… because they don’t start developing language when they’re five, they need to hear from the moment they’re born, so that they’re developing language on a pattern, and that they develop language in a normal pattern like every other child does, so that they’re not delayed. So I went to the heads of your Yachad and I said, we need to do something. This is criminal. I used that word. I said, it is criminal, what’s going on here. I’m an audiologist. I work for Yachad. But I’m an audiologist, I understand how hearing aids work, I understand how hearing loss works, we could create a system where we collect used hearing aids from people because they’ve got new hearing aids because they’re not using them for whatever reason, because unfortunately, somebody has passed away… Let’s collect those hearing aids. Let’s work with audiologists and hearing aid dealers in different parts of the country, and it’s spreading around the world a little bit now, where we can offer the people, a free lending program, where people can send us their audiograms, their hearing loss table, and we can match as close as possible the hearing aids we have in our stock to their hearing loss and send them back. So what happens is, somebody would contact me and say, I need hearing aids, but I can’t afford them, anybody, they have to see a doctor to make sure their ears are healthy. And then they go to either their audiologist or hearing aid dealer, send me their audiogram. I’ll look at the stock of what we have presently, and I will match it up as close as possible and send them two sets for them to try. They take those hearing aids to their audiologist or hearing aid dealer. If they don’t have someone to go to, we have in some places geographically around the US, dealers that they can go to that work with us who will tweak what we send them and try it with them. If the hearing aids work, they are free to use them for as long as they want. There is no fee from us. It is free. 

LS:

Wow!

BJ:

Whatever doesn’t work we ask them to return it to us so we can use it for someone else. If the two first sets do not work, they send both back.

LS:

I think that the biggest question most people might have right now is wait a minute, how can you take hearing aids that would be made for one person and use them for another person. So clearly, you’re not talking about “custom” hearing aids. 

BJ:

Well, generally speaking, we really try to tell people that the ones that fit in the ear are not going to work in this system, because you can’t remodel them to somebody else’s ears. Most of the hearing aids we are using are behind the ear hearing aids. What you’re going to wind up paying for is whatever fees your person charges you, your fitter charges you, and the cost of a new ear mold. Because those ear molds have to be made for you. But instead of thousands of dollars, you’re paying a couple of hundred dollars. Big difference.

LS:

Wow!

BJ:

We used to get very old hearing aids. We’re getting a lot of digital hearing aids now, which are amazing. We’re getting a lot of hearing aids that really are programmable for specific hearing losses, which is so nice. We also work with a rabbi from Baltimore, who has answered a lot of the Jewish law questions about wearing hearing aids and cochlear implants on Sabbath and on holidays. Because a lot of the hearing aids that they make now are programmable with your iPhone. So we have those sources that when people ask us questions, we have somebody that they can go to directly. We have books that we can send to them if they want that. To answer questions, because there’s so many new questions that definitely when my child had his first set of hearing aids, we didn’t know where to turn to. We went to our Rabbi, the Rabbi said yes, he’s going to wear them, now I’ll find out how, you know? Literally.

LS:

Yeah, you know, this is very interesting, too. And I think our audience will find it fascinating as well. I also teach at the university level. And there’s one class we always teach on cultural competence, and how different groups of people in different traditions have very specific needs. For example, in some cultures making eye contact is very respectful whereas, in other cultures, if a child makes eye contact with an adult that’s so forward and rude. So having sort of a knowledge of what’s appropriate for each person specifically in each family is so important. Imagine the child’s goal is to make eye contact with adults – that’s specifically contrary to what they’re being expected to do at home. So that’s one of the common ones and in terms of hearing aids and what you’re talking about: if someone doesn’t know that Orthodox Jews won’t use electronics one day out of the week. Well, that’s pretty significant when they need assistive technology. And even though there’s sort of an exception or leniency. There’s still people that have questions about how you would go about using that.

BJ:

I remember when our son was about six months old. We had a family come to us for lunch on Sabbath, and they’d been to us many times [before]. They came into the house. They saw our son wearing hearing aids and the father announced at the top of his voice ‘children you can’t eat here they no longer keep Sabbath.’ 

LS:

Wow.

BJ:

And my husband and I were mortified. Needless to say they’d never been back (LS and BJ laugh) But we were mortified. And we were like ‘don’t you think we asked what to do and how to do it.’

LS:

So yeah, because to them, they were looking at you and they said we can’t trust that your food is on our standards in terms of Kosher as if they just saw you eating pork.

BJ:

Right. 

LS:

Because you didn’t keep this law.

BJ:

Because our kid was wearing an electric device in his ears.

LS:

And it’s also that combination of ableism, and discrimination against disabilities, cultural norms, and religious observances. Like just hit all the pain points everywhere.

BJ:

Absolutely.

LS:

What a thing. So do you think that the older siblings felt that this was a moment for them to advocate for their little brother?

BJ:

I think that initially they were like kind of shocked and taken aback. I think it was the eight year old, the oldest one, [that] kind of wanted to make a joke out of it. Like ‘what are you saying? Who do you think you are?’ And he turned to me with a word [saying]:. ‘Oh, good, mom. I liked your food. That means there’s more for us to eat.’ 

LS:

Yeah. 

BJ:

But they became very protective of him in a certain way like no one was going to ever say anything like that to our brother again. But I think culturally as you go through life, at certain junctions in life, you see these prejudices. And when you’re living with a disability, no matter what that disability is, these prejudices come out from people. And they don’t really even know sometimes what they’re saying. Sometimes they do it spitefully and sometimes they just don’t even realize that you’re saying something that could be hurtful.

LS:

It’s true. So much is out of ignorance. And then you have a decision if you’re going to be the educator and change the world. Or, you know, say actually, this is not my fight today, and I’m going to hold my people close and say thank you, goodbye.

BJ:

Right, I think sometimes unfortunately, I want to fight. No (laughs)

LS:

That’s okay.

BJ:

It’s because nobody should be treated poorly because of the way God made us. And I truly believe each of us is made the way God intended us to be made. No one is better or worse than another person. Just the way we are. And each of us has something that’s a challenge. And each of us has things that we add to the world. So who has the right to judge what’s better or worse than another person? So this is, I guess, one of the small ways that Yachad tries to help people’s lives for the better.

LS:

From what I know, it’s also very much about introducing and including people in the community with other people, rather than isolating and saying, ‘Oh, the programs are only for disabled kids in any sense,’ but really bringing them in.

BJ:

Yeah I mean, I remember when I started in Yachad, if there was a handful of children in typical schools, certainly typical Jewish schools, that was a lot. And now I think it would be hard to find a typical school that doesn’t have a child who learns differently in a classroom. It’s the way we teach now. Every child learns differently. So every child has the right to be included. And we work with teachers all through the world to help them include every type of learner, and it’s not always easy. We know that. We just published a siddur, a prayer book, that looks like the typical prayer book that you would find being used by any other member of the congregation. But it’s made specifically so a person who has developmental disabilities can follow it [and] can understand the meaning. It’s color coded so that they can recognize which prayer is said when. It has picture graphs of when to bow, how you bow, when to cover your eyes for prayers. So that it guides them so they can pray along with the rest of the congregation, but they don’t feel like they’re praying out of a book that was written for five years.

LS:

Wow, that’s really, really such a unique place to introduce accessibility. And I think it’s so important – [going] back to the idea of things that need to be culturally, religiously [inclusive], that has to come from within the community, for the people in the community. That’s something that’s very special and very important. 

BJ:

Yeah, [also] camps is like a perfect example. Because anything can go in camps. It’s a place where there is so much less judgment. You don’t get graded by how you play baseball or, or soccer, or do an art project. So it’s such a great place to be inclusive. And so many camps want to include people with disabilities. So you have to make those connections and Yachad has been very successful. Other programs also have been successful with this, but it’s a great place and when you make those bonds in those friendships in that laid back easygoing summer experience, it comes back during the year. And then they go out for pizza. It just reaches back into the community and works one thing on top of the other and it’s such a great friendship and an opportunity to really bond. And then as they get older, these are employers who are going to include employees in their programs because they’ve already learned the abilities of people who have disabilities.

LS:

Powerful. So let’s bring it back to hearing aids for one second. Because I think another question people would have about the free lending society or the gemach, in Hebrew. So if somebody would be in need, and would want to learn about the gemach, or how they might get hearing aids from a free lending society, what would they do? What would be their steps to go about that?

BJ:

First, they’re going to go to their own hearing aid dealer or audiologist and they’re going to get a hearing test. They’re also going to go to their doctor – so somebody’s looking in the ears to say their ears are okay, and that they’re healthy. [Then] they’re going to email me. My email is Batya, B as in Barbara. A,T,Y,A. J for Jacobs at OU.org.

LS:

We’ll definitely have that in the show. 

BJ:

Okay. And they’re going to email me and tell me ‘I heard about the gemach, the freelancing society. I’m interested in getting hearing aids.’ And I’m going to ask you to send me your phone number. And we’ll set up a time to talk. Send me your audiogram and the letter from your doctor. And then we’ll set up a time to talk so I can find out a little bit about where you live, your lifestyle, what you’re looking for. Because some people may not even be ready for a hearing aid. They may want just an amplifier like the desktop amplifier. We do have some of those in this program. A few, not a lot, but a few. We have amplifiers for the phone [and] for the TV. So we have all sorts of equipment. We have batteries that people have donated. Somebody once wanted to try to donate your prosthetic leg. We did not accept that. I must tell you because honestly, I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

LS:

What about FM systems?

BJ:

So we have one or two FM systems. I really don’t lend them out too much because I kind of want them to go back, but sometimes the audiologist will contact me. And we’ll have that conversation also and that’ll help guide me better too. So we do have a couple FM systems. After the conversation, I will look at what they send me, their test results, and I will send out what we have that might match. I can also tell you that if people who are listening have hearing aids, specifically behind the ear hearing aids, that they want to donate, we would love to have them. We really are in need. We have about 80 to 100 pairs of hearing aids right now in people’s ears, and we have about 75 to 100 pairs of hearing aids in the cabinet to go out. But we’re always looking for more. And if there are any professionals who would like to be on our list to work with us, to help people. We would love to know who you are. Because we have people out in California who want to come to us and we have somebody in the LA region or somebody in Tel Aviv or somebody in London, who we can send our person to. It really helps people who are coming to us. 

LS:

That’s fabulous. And you know the other thing I want people to take away from our conversation is that this is something that you can also do within your community or within your practice [or] with your network. You know, if you’re on the professional side, if you’re a parent, there’s so much that we can do. That’s the idea of collective sharing, especially throughout the pandemic. I think a lot of us have learned local, local, local. The people around you are the people you have. Really. And the idea of having a communal fridge in the neighborhood or an apartment building. We actually have a room and building where I live, which is kind of a drop-anything-take-anything room for old kids bikes or toys or roller skates, sort of outdoor kid equipment. And that is such a lovely thing. Of course everyone still has things that belong to them: their own kids bikes that are currently theirs are not in that room. But it’s really a sweet thing. Of course thrift stores and like there’s this model in different places in different parts of our lives. But when it comes to medical equipment, I think people will say, ‘Well, what do I do with this thing?’ Like if it’s three or four or five years old, they don’t need it anymore. For all the reasons you mentioned before. There is an address where this can go on to help someone else. It’s not over. Maybe they might think oh, the molds are dirty or the molds are old. Well, don’t worry, the person will get new molds.

BJ:

Right. The mold is the least expensive piece of the whole equipment. And nowadays they’re not even using molds. They’re using like little plugins. So that is the easiest piece to give a person. It’s the hearing aid itself and as our hearing aids are getting better, getting more specific to different types of hearing losses, they’re getting more expensive. And the insurance policies are not getting better in terms of paying for them. That’s just reality. So we as a global community need to take care of each other. This is a way we can.

LS:

So I have a technical question on the side of what about certain devices that are actually locked. You can’t actually make changes to the programming. They sometimes are doing software that they don’t want people passing them from person to person even though technically you should be able to do that.

BJ:

So I haven’t run across it yet. It may be what’s coming into me or maybe that I’m just doing a really good job matching. [laughs] I haven’t had that problem yet. So I don’t really know the answer to that. 

LS:

Okay. Good. Let’s  not create problems where there are no problems.

BJ:

Right

LS:

I do want to stress that you know, we are part of the Orthodox Union, but this is a program that is open to anyone. And I really want to stress that it’s not open to only Jewish Orthodox people. It’s not open to only Jewish people. This is a program that we really are sharing with the global community. And that’s really important to tell people. Spread the words to your friends. Spread the word to the people you’re working with, to your colleagues, to your friends, to other parents. This is an issue I as a parent have faced. I as a clinician have faced with parents who have come in to me. No child should go home yet no adult or teenager nobody should have this be an issue for them.

LS:

Wow. Definitely. I think people in our community will be very excited to hear about this. So thank you for sharing with us with [the] All About Audiology community. That is very important to know. I would ask if you have advice for the parents listening. So your son is 32. You have many, many years of experience being his mom and also the other kids of course. I think so many of our listeners are new parents, young parents, overwhelmed and new to the journey.

BJ:

I think I would tell you never give up. Believe in your gut feelings. Believe in your child. They can accomplish anything that you give them the confidence they can do. They may find a different path, a different route to do it on. But they’ll get there, maybe slowly but they’ll get there. There are so many times my child turned to me and said, I [meaning Batya] did it wrong. You told me I couldn’t, and I did. And I think to build that self confidence and that self reliance is probably the most important thing we can ever give to our children. I think for any child, we want them to reach their fullest potential, whatever their potential is. And if we believe in our kids, that belief will come down to anybody who comes into contact with them and to the child. As parents, I can tell you that I was always afraid my other children would be upset with us that we gave him the extra time that he needed. As adults every one of my children came back to us and said ‘thank you for giving him that time. Because he is who he is because you gave him the time that he needed when he was younger.’ Don’t second guess yourself, give your kids each one of them the time that each one of them needs and deserves and never ever give up on them.

LS:

I’m so glad you mentioned that about siblings, because that’s something that comes up a lot in our conversations in our community around the resentment and the unfairness that ends up happening when one child has appointment after appointment. And the other children, well, they’re sitting around waiting [with] no attention on me. Yeah. 

BJ:

You’re juggling, right?

LS:

So what are some tips for that? What would you say? I mean to have your kids come to you and say good job. We didn’t feel that. What? Tell me more.

BJ:

And they didn’t feel it, but they realized it later. And I kept saying, I’m gonna give each one of them individual time, but you couldn’t always do that. And my son had a twin sister. So it was even harder. It wasn’t like I could say, oh, you’re older so I don’t need to give you the same attention at that moment. She was the same age as him. And it wasn’t always easy, and I always tried to somehow play the balance as much as I could. But I learned very early that fair isn’t always equal and equal isn’t always fair. 

LS:

I need that on a pillow.

BJ:

And gave them all lots of love. I made a very big effort every night to reach each child individually and as they got older, to give each of them like that five minutes before bed individually. So bedtimes alone time.

LS:

I’m hearing that five times five, that’s 25 minutes.

BJ:

But it was worth it. It really was worth it because they appreciated that also. The time you put into them comes back, and it really makes it worth it to you and to them. They feel that you’re invested in them. And as parents, thank God, they all have children and each of their children have their own needs. And I believe every kid has special needs, diagnosable or not. And they said to us we learned a lot about being parents from watching you parents us, because you know sometimes if you don’t kill them, they just come back and tell you good things. [both laugh]. But it’s really true. Like they can learn to understand that juggling act is so hard, especially because besides the kids you have to make dinner and do the laundry and work and all the other pieces of your life doesn’t just go to the wayside because you want to spend the five minutes with each one of those kids. It takes time. It takes determination but at the end of the day, it’s really worth it.

LS:

Very true. Yeah, exactly. And a very, very special shout out to the single parents who are even doing that without a partner.

BJ:

And I also want to say if you have grandparents who are nearby, and in today’s world, they don’t even have to be nearby. They need to maybe have just a computer and they want to be involved. Let them be involved. Let that parent spend five minutes reading the story, even over zoom to your kids. Use that support system. They want to be involved with your kids too. Your kids will value their time with the grandparents, [and they] will build that relationship and that really helps with some of that juggling really makes a big difference. 

LS:

Yes, screens are not the enemy. 

BJ:

They’re not! They used to be before COVID. We thought so, but they’re really not the enemy.

LS:

What you do with them, for sure. I like the way you keep saying five minutes, five minutes. Right, this doesn’t have to be a 15 hour endeavor. It’s the little things consistently over time. I talk to my kids all the time about how we need to brush our teeth every day. And every day they want to know ‘but we did this yesterday.’ [both laugh] But we are going to brush our teeth every day for 2 minutes. Not once a week for 30 minutes. [LS laughs]. Similar to that is the building of that consistency. This is awesome. And one last thing. What would you say to someone who is interested in participating? Do you accept donations besides for hearing aids themselves [such as] monetary donations? Is that also what is happening here?

BJ:

Of course! We absolutely accept donations. I will tell you that donations that come in go directly to programming, to scholarships for people, for families, and for participants to be able to join any of the myriad of programs we run. Whatever the disability is, you can earmark it to a particular region or a particular program. We have programs that range from social programs, to camps, to schools, to the hearing aid programs. Basically, you name it we probably have it. [We also have] holiday programs. We have family respite programs. We have counseling, it is all through the United States, Israel, Canada. So you can email me. I can help you match what you might want to give. And I can tell you, it doesn’t matter what you want to give. It can be as little or as much as you’re able, it is all useful and old, greatly, greatly appreciated.

LS:

We’ll have that link as well, where you can learn more about this programming. I’m so so grateful. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and sharing your story and all the work that you’ve done all this time with this incredible, free-lending society that is providing for so many people and access.

BJ:

Thank you so much for allowing me into this amazing network that you’ve created. 

LS:

And thank you to all the listeners of the All About Audiology podcast. If you’re not following on Instagram, that is where we have lots of updates and also where you meet other people in the comments. So come and join at All About Audiology podcast. There’s also a Facebook group. And thank you thank you to all the patrons of the podcast. You can become a patron at https://www.patreon.com/join/allaboutaudiology. All the links and full transcript of our conversation is at All About Audiology podcast. All the previous episodes. So search in the search bar for any topic, any question that you have, feel free to reach out to me anytime. I’m Dr. Lilach Saperstein, and this is the All About Audiology Podcast.

The post All About A Hearing Aid Lending Program – Episode 89  appeared first on All About Audiology.