Your support helps babies who are deaf and hard of hearing learn to hear, listen and speak.

Donations made before December 31, 2011 will be matched 100%.

In the United States, more babies are born with hearing loss than any other congenital health problem. For these babies, the first three years of life are critical.

Without sound, the brain re-organizes itself to receive input from other senses, primarily vision, space that cannot be reclaimed effectively again. But when babies with hearing loss receive early amplification and intervention services from The Sound Start Program, they can acquire age appropriate communications skills by the time they are five.

With your support, each year The Sound Start Early Intervention Program provides comprehensive, dramatically life changing therapies to 50 babies from throughout northern and central New Jersey in their own homes, and at the award winning Lake Drive School for Children Who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey.

Since 1969, Sound Start has been on the cutting edge of new therapies and innovations. Last year, Sound Start opened Ivy Nursery, New Jersey’s only full day inclusive early intervention program for toddlers with hearing loss. In this breakthrough program, toddlers with and without hearing loss learn with each other and from each other in classes that maximize their exposure to auditory learning. At age three they graduate ready to learn in preschool at Lake Drive or in their home communities.

In spite of the program’s success, state funding covers barely one third of the comprehensive services. The Lake Drive Foundation hopes you will support us in raising $300,000 this year to ensure local babies who are deaf and hard of hearing have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.

We believe there is no sounder investment than in early intervention, and it is especially effective for children who are deaf and hard of hearing. It only costs $6,000 to change the life of one child forever.

● Without programs like Sound Start, children with mild to moderate hearing loss, on average, achieve one to four grade levels lower than their peers with normal hearing. Children with severe to profound hearing loss usually achieve skills no higher than the third- or fourth-grade level. (The American Speech-Hearing Association)

● When babies with hearing loss get appropriate intervention from birth to age three, they can acquire age appropriate communications skills by the time they are five. (Robinshaw, 1995 and Moeller, 1996; Yoshinaga-Itano, 1999)

● Early identification and intervention for children with hearing loss can save schools approximately $420,000 per child in special education services, and has a lifetime savings to the community of approximately $1,000,000 per individual. (Johnson JL, Mauk GW, Takekawa KM, Simon PR, Sia CCJ, Blackwell PM)