Communication for Children with Hearing Impairment to optimise Language Development (Comm4CHILD)

Start date: 1 September 2019
End date: 30 September 2022
Funder: EU Horizon 2020
Value: €4,094,955.00
Co-investigators: Professor Ruth Swanwick
External co-investigators: Universite Libre De Bruxelles (PI), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique, Linkopings Universitet

Comm4CHILD is a consortium implementing an innovative approach for optimising the communicative skills and social inclusion of children with HI.

Comm4CHILD addresses the large inter-individual heterogeneity in brain plasticity, cognitive resources, and linguistic abilities, and takes full advantage of this heterogeneity to support efficient communicative skills in children with HI. A group of 15 ESRs will be trained in research and intervention in a cross-sectoral conceptualized within the tree areas of biology, cognition and language.

Impact

The ESRs will become the paediatric hearing care entrepreneurs of the future, thanks to the collaborations between academic, industrial, clinical, and community-based partners. The output of this unique consortium is expected to have an impact across all aspects of HI children's everyday life. Specifically, Comm4CHILD will provide a significantly improved understanding of communicative and social skills that will underpin the development of innovative future treatment and rehabilitation measures.