Jacqueline Stokes obituary

Jacqueline Stokes became the initial auditory verbal therapist to practise in the Uk

The work of my colleague Jacqueline Stokes, who has died of cancer aged 61, enabled hundreds of hearing-impaired children to find out to listen and talk.

Brought up in Dorset, she studied training at Homerton School, Cambridge, and then taught English in Oxford before enrolling at McGill University, Montreal, in 1980, to train as an auditory verbal therapist under Daniel Ling, a pioneer in educating deaf youngsters in speaking. She became the very first auditory verbal therapist to practise in the United kingdom, operating at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading for a lot of many years. Her approach was to coach mother and father in capabilities for developing listening and talking, while utilizing the very best amplification obtainable.

Jacqueline was an extraordinary therapist, demonstrating and eliciting speech and listening in infants and children and effectively transferring these abilities to mother and father so that families could give a rich experience of sounds, songs and speech for their kid. Each and every session was characterised by laughter and perform.

New research has proven what Jacqueline knew intuitively – that the extent of a family’s engagement indicates how effectively a little one will react. She was passionate about attaining a very good end result for all households who chose speaking and listening as their child’s mode of communication. To encourage the auditory verbal technique, Jacqueline established the charity Auditory Verbal United kingdom (AVUK) in 2003.

When the Newborn Hearing Screening Programme was launched in the NHS in 2006, to determine infants born with everlasting hearing reduction in the 1st handful of weeks of daily life and fit them with hearing aids, Jacqueline grasped the possible for offering households crucial early assistance. She explained to parents the tremendous positive aspects of early studying offered by the neural plasticity of infancy. She would challenge the mediocre aspirations of other professionals in the discipline by asking: “But would you be content with that if it was your youngster with hearing loss?”

Jacqueline was thrilled by the advances produced in the diagnosis of hearing reduction and in assistance for young children. She advocated the continuing education of pros to make sure that they have been capable to hold up with progress. For a kid who was not obtaining the full benefit of hearing technology, she would say: “It is like becoming offered the keys to the auto, but not getting taught how to drive it.”

Jacqueline had clarity of vision, determination and emotional engagement that produced her each inspirational and, at occasions, dauntingly aspirational.

She is survived by 3 daughters, Alexandra, Madeleine and Francesca, from her marriage to Steve Woolgar.

Jacqueline Stokes obituary