Telepractice Services at Sound Beginnings at Utah State University

The Utah State University Sound Beginnings program originated in 2007 as a laboratory school to serve children with hearing loss from birth to age 6 years old living in Northern Utah. Sound Beginnings offers an interdisciplinary listening and spoken language educational option for families through the following services: toddler and preschool classrooms, individual therapy, home-based early intervention, and onsite pediatric audiology services. Sound Beginnings is working with the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind to expand telepractice services across the state of Utah. Currently, training is in place to introduce new early intervention providers to the process outlined in this article. As more families are served through telepractice, the staff at Sound Beginnings hope to discover new ways to improve the model for families and early intervention providers. In addition, they are working to develop a model for telepractice that accommodates families using English as a second language. Sound Beginnings has found that provision of telepractice services is a critical element in the provision of high-quality early intervention services to families of infants and toddlers with hearing loss.